i'm in southeast asia with my 1913 bradshaw's  handbook published at the height of european  

imperialism my 100 year old guy book will  leave me on a railway adventure through  

archipelagos and peninsulas dotted with  hills forests and paddy fields i'll tour  

towering mega cities and magnificent mosques i'll  encounter golden buddhas and jewelled temples  

and experience some of the world's most  spectacular and notorious railways as i travel  

through the diverse nations of this vast region  i'll learn how they asserted their independence  

against the british french and dutch empires to  become the economic tigers and dragons of today

my two and a half thousand mile exploration  

of six countries of southeast asia that started  in hong kong has finally brought me to singapore

singapore is a free port a great  entrepreneur of merchandise  

and a meeting place of representatives of almost  every european asiatic and american nation founded  

in 1819 by sir stamford raffles that was the  entry in my bradshaws more than a century ago  

welcome to singapore the only sovereign  islands city state once britain's most  

successful colonial invention and today one  of the world's most prosperous countries  

on this leg i'll begin in the central business  district then travel to tuas on the west coast  

i'll explore the historic  neighborhood of chinatown  

and visit marina bay which  once lay beneath the sea

on my travels i'll soak up  the street art of chinatown  

i took 10 weekends to paint this  mural while working as an accountant  

you were not a professional artist then yeah i  wasn't now i am i'll visit the birthplace of a  

world famous cocktail hello guess what i'm going  to order a singer possibly a singer foresling

and help to keep the nation's  orchids in bloom isn't that beautiful

this tiny independent nation at the  southern tip of the malay peninsula  

is an astonishing asian success story in just 200  years it's grown from a swamp-filled jungle colony  

into a center of international finance and trade  

its multi-ethnic society  of almost 6 million people  

enjoys one of the highest living standards  and the lowest crime rates in the world

here on the singapore river is where it all began

singapore is situated says the guidebook on two  sides of a salt creek that empties into the sea  

at the west head of a deep bay navigable  for small boats vessels lie at the  

one and a half miles long away from the town  

bradshaw's was clearly impressed but today a  thousand ships are in singapore at any one time  

one leaves or arrives every two or three  minutes and then there's all of this  

with the second biggest port in the world  after shanghai singapore is a maritime giant

i'm heading to its west coast where plans  are afoot to double the port's capacity

this train is taking me to the mega port  construction site towards singapore's future

they're building the new port at twas on five  square miles of land reclaimed from the sea a  

practice well established in singapore since the  time of raffles it will be the world's largest  

fully automated container port and i'm getting a  sneak preview with senior director of engineering  

tam y-wah mr town this is on a bewildering scale  all of this then is land that you are reclaiming  

from the sea is that right oh yes that's right  we are constructing four fingers for the entire  

transport development and this is finger two so  this is a finger this is one of the four fingers  

that we are constructing absolutely amazing  and the sea wall sits out there and you just  

fill in behind it is that how it works uh yes but  before that dc was actually fabricated on shore  

what does that look like that sea wall the  sea was actually a k zone structure reinforced  

concrete structures about 28 meters high and  that's equivalent to a 10 story high building  

and weighs about 15 000 tons and these caissons  will be slotted in next to each other to create  

the seawall will they absolutely and then the  question must be why do you need to do this  

our vision is to build a port that can  actually increases productivity and efficiency  

optimize the land use trenton  singapore's position as a global hub port

this is the biggest port project in the world  and the first phase will be operational in 2021  

for a bird's eye view i'm going 90 foot up to  the top of one of the massive concrete cubes or  

caissons that will form the sea walls  mr tom what an extraordinary sight and  

this is what a completed caisson looks  like yes absolutely this is a completed  

case on structure and it's ready to be launched  into the sea and what i can see here is that it  

has a cellular structure it's largely hollow yes  it is hollow for a reason because we need to first  

and foremost floating away water so that it can  sink into the sea these enormous caissons at first  

actually float on the water do they yes that's  right and then you sink it how we actually pumps  

in rash materials displace the water out it  will sink all the way down to the sea bay  

this mega facility will replace four separate  container ports and be fully operational in  

2040. what will you do with the existing  poor facilities transport will combine all  

singapore's existing port operations at one  site the consolidation of the container port  

facilities will be part of a larger plan to free  up land for redevelopment as a new district well  

i feel like i've come to the right vantage point  to see the future of singapore yeah thank you

this station raffle's place

the origin of this nation was the vision of one  man i've come to the raffles landing site in the  

central business district to find out about him  from professor of asian studies john mixick john  

what was it that stanford raffles does in 1819  well he walked ashore here in january and there  

was a big house right where we're standing now  which belonged to local chief and he saw maybe  

100 houses and there were maybe a hundred families  living on boats those were the sea nomad groups  

and then there were maybe 20 or 30 chinese living  a bit further upstream did you therefore need  

anyone's permission to develop singapore they had  to get first the permission of the local chief and  

they signed a treaty very quickly and then they  sent a messenger down into that real archipelago  

got permission from the sultan to set up  something here so he had to go through channels  

sir thomas stamford raffles joined the british  east india company age 14. while serving in penang  

he made a name for himself by studying malay  culture and rose to become governor of java

did he have good reason to think that  singapore would make a good sequel  

raffles actually had history on his side he'd  collected this old book an old malay manuscript  

called the millennials in english and that  portrays singapore as the first great malay  

trading port and so he thought they could revive  it did work begin at once in building a port  

instantly the main thing that he used to try and  get people to come here was the duty-free aspect  

and so that attracted thousands of people  it's interesting this where did he get  

the free port idea because that was clearly  fundamental to its success yeah he'd already  

come up with this idea himself he'd been talking  to the local malay people down in java without  

the dutch and one of the main gripes they had was  that they had to pay all these taxes raffles very  

enlightenedly realize that if they didn't squeeze  them the volume of trade would increase many fold

raffos didn't live to see his port flourish dying  of a brain tumor in 1826 on the eve of his 45th  

birthday it's quite a controversial figure he was  accused of incompetence and corruption in java  

on the other hand he was a brilliant botanist and  apparently he certainly knew his history was great  

orientalist how do you sum up this extraordinary  man he was very colorful everybody else looks like  

just a great bureaucrat next to him he had a lot  of business ideas which were ahead of his time  

but he also had this very great interest in  the local culture which was totally unique  

in his period i'd like to understand how  international trade first flourished here  

so i'm heading to collier key for a trip along the  singapore river with maritime expert donna brunero  

hello donna hello hi michael very good to see you  it's good to see you donal raffles comes at 1819  

and pretty quickly they begin to build  a port where do they do that actually  

the development was here in the singapore  river within a few years you're looking at  

quite a large population up to 10 000 had moved  from different parts of the region but you've  

also got european traders coming in and they're  trading what spices lacquerwood commodities  

from the region and then you've got that great  east-west trade so goods from india goods from  

china as well and when do rubber and tin appear  on the scene rubber and tin it's later it's more  

towards the 1900s and this is where you've got the  british really affirming their position in british  

malaya and the rubber and the tin transported down  by rail mainly and it shipped out of singapore in  

the early part of the 20th century can be some  idea then of what the port is like there were a  

lot of complaints by merchants about how congested  the river was so there was an investigation and  

over about a three day period they surveyed the  number of ships coming and going from the river  

and in some six thousand ships at least it earned  the nickname of being the liverpool of the east  

my guidebook talks about a new port having  been created outside the river where there  

are long walls for the vessels when does that  happen ah this happens more again the late  

1800s where they talk about the creation of a  new harbour and this was basically because when  

you have larger sailing ships and steamships the  river can't accommodate them the old harbor can't  

accommodate so they develop what they call the new  harbour and then goes on to be called keppel i'm  

very intrigued that here in the financial district  there's nonetheless a row of lovely old houses  

what were they and how they've been preserved  these are actually the old shop houses or go  

down so warehouses around the 1980s the  singapore river was really badly polluted  

and there was this massive cleanup operation part  of that was also the restoration of the buildings  

and completely reviving the singapore  river as a tourist destination

i'm ending my day at the city's iconic  landmark named after the man who put singapore  

on the map raffles mentioned in my bradshaw's  guide one of the most famous hotels in the world  

it's on beach road hard to believe that  this building once looked out over the sea  

all these skyscrapers beyond  here are built on reclaimed land  

welcome to raffle singapore thank you very  much indeed pleasure to be here thank you

today a national monument the hotel opened in  1887 and was soon a byword for colonial luxury  

counting among its guests film  stars presidents and royalty

it's also the birthplace of the  nation's world famous cocktail  

hello hello welcome to the wrong bar guess what  i'm going to order a single poisoning a single  

porcelain how long have you been serving that it  started to be served in 1915 created by nyang tong  

boon the local bartender why do you think it's so  popular why did it catch on so well it catches on  

because the the drink reflects singapore the  past and match perfectly with rafael's story

an exotic blend of gin bitters and the cures  were mixed with fruit juices and grenadine  

which gave it a distinctly feminine  look it is thank you very much

at a time when it wasn't considered  ladylike to drink in public  

this pink drink enabled women to partake of  something that looked very innocent but was  

in fact rather wicked all the well-known  international bar flies of drunk here  

ernest hemingway joseph conrad sunset moorm  noel coward charlie chaplin great lives  

but none had a biography to compare with the man  after whom this hotel is named stamford raffles

you free yeah i'm free yes sir try the  time please okay no problem let's go

this morning i'm forsaking the modern metro  for a mode of transport that evokes the age  

of my bratwal's guidebook rickshaw is  derived from a japanese word meaning  

manpowered carriage colonials  might have been hurried around  

by elderly coolies no longer fit to work in the  docks until modernizing singapore banned the  

rickshaw in 1947. tourists can still get a whiff  of empire in a tri-shore and it's going to be my  

vehicle to understanding the three-quarters  of the population that is ethnic chinese

when stamford raffles claim this island  for britain chinese merchants and fishermen  

already lived here after the colony was  established further immigrants arrived  

from china's southern provinces looking for  work and they became the largest ethnic group

in the shadow of the city's skyscrapers  lies the historic district of chinatown  

the cultural heart of  singapore's chinese community

artist yip yu chong is meeting me by a  massive street mural which he has painted  

yu chong hello i'm michael welcome michael  what a pleasure glad to see you michael  

what a wonderful piece of work thank you first  of all tell me what is this wall this is the  

back wall of the ten hawking temple ammo street  this is one of the oldest streets in singapore  

and what story are you telling here in your miura  i've painted the story of the hawkins one of our  

chinese dialect groups who migrated from china in  the 1800s they traveled two weeks on the sea and  

arriving in singapore it was an arduous journey  and what are we seeing here now this scene depicts  

how they settle down their hardships and they  work as coolies and they built the first hospital  

they built the water systems and this  was how we lived in the past this was  

the quarter of the chinese in singapore they  were allocated this area yes the hawkins were  

especially allocated by the british colonial  government we come more towards the modern day  

yes i have painted a lot of bun boats which have  now all disappeared but i have also just posted  

the current buildings when did you paint this  mural in 2017 i took 10 weekends to paint this  

mural while working as an accountant you were not  a professional artist then yeah i wasn't now i am

yep yu-chong lived in a cantonese neighborhood  here in the heart of chinatown until he was  

a teenager yuchong what was it like for  you growing up in chinatown i have very  

fond memories my family lived on a street  of the dead sago lane because there were  

funeral palace coffee shop makers what were the  elements of your culture did it revolve around  

food music dance my family it revolves about  watching cantonese opera yeah as a little boy  

i actually went all around chinatown with my aunt  to hunt for cantonese operas which were staged  

under the tent how fantastic what happened to your  house my house had been demolished in fact the  

whole street was demolished many of these houses  that you see here they're still around but they  

have been converted into more like a business  the people who have moved out of these houses  

where did they end up my family were allocated  a government flat like this a tall building  

chong has kindly invited me to lunch  at his mother's home on the 25th floor  

about four-fifths of singaporeans now live  in state-built high-rises like this one  

the government's solution to limited  space and a growing population

hello this is michael hello i'm michael this is  my aunt hello mother oh what a pleasure hello  

great honor to be here so very kind  of you to have me here very very kind

this is our mid-autumn reunion that we hold  every year the two reunions we do one is  

chinese new year one is the mid autumn that's  why you see all the lanterns oh yes yes yes  

did you get your artistic talent from your  mother or from your father from my dad from  

your dad tell me about your time my dad used to  use chalk to draw on the streets really crops of  

people were surrounded to watch him draw was he  a professional artist he was a fitter a shipyard

she was a seamstress and she was  also a cook at a sushi counter

well you are you are a wonderful cook may ask  what are you doing at the moment i'm studying  

second year in university and what are you  studying communications and new media yst  

would you please say to your mother that it's been  an enormous honor to come here and share her table  

this autumn festival with your  delightful family thank you so much

after a morning in one of  singapore's liveliest neighborhoods  

i'm on route to one of its most tranquil  the guidebook steers me towards tangling  

botanical gardens including part of the original  jungle it's time to take a walk on the wild side

the singapore botanic gardens as they're now known  

are a glorious 74 acres of  tropical trees and plants

hello lawrence hi michael hello michael  welcome to the singapore botanic gardens  

thank you very much beautiful dr lawrence young  deputy ceo of the national parks board is going  

to tell me about their history lawrence here are  we in a piece of original rainforest we are in  

a piece of primary rainforest in singapore this  is what singapore would have looked like before  

we started to clear land for agriculture and  developments this piece of forest is extremely  

important to us because it is undisturbed also  this serves as a place where we will collect  

seed material that we can use to propagate  and to reforest other parts of singapore  

how fantastic stamford raffles was an amateur  botanist did he create a garden here yes when  

he arrived in 1819 he started the first botanic  garden in singapore and his primary motivation  

was to study crops potential spice crops not make  clothes but that botanic garden only lasted till  

about 18 29 and this botanic garden came in 1859  what has been the historic importance of this  

botanic garden it started as a pleasure garden  for the members of the agri-horticulture society  

but in 1874 the society ran into  financial difficulty and they asked the  

government to take over and started to invite  superintendents and directors from kew gardens  

one of those experts was henry nicholas ridley  he was appointed the garden's first director and  

under his management he began to play an important  role in the development of singapore in 1877  

kew gardens gifted us 22 seedlings of rubber and  as these grew henry greatly studied them and he  

perfected the way to tap rubber without destroying  the tree and that gave rise to the rubber industry  

the other important contribution that this garden  made to the economics of this region in the 1920s  

was to learn how to germinate seeds of orchids in  large numbers and it gave the ability to hybridize  

orchids and it gave rise to the orchid  industry that's wonderful history wonderful  

the cultivation of orchids remains an important  part of the work of the gardens the orchid garden  

contains 1 000 different species and 2 000  hybrid varieties and singapore has become  

one of the world's biggest orchid exporters wang  lee kang is deputy director of the orchid garden  

they king hey hi michael i'm sorry to  disturb you uh i've never seen such a  

beautiful display of orchids no it's one  of the largest okay garden in this region  

and it's one of the best in the world because of  the wide variety of species and plants that on  

display here what is it all having to do with this  orchid so whenever the flowers faded it needs to  

be removed and then new fresh flowers are brought  in to be changed so that the visitor whenever  

the visitors come here they always constantly see  fresh new flowers on display that's wonderful may  

i help you with that yeah okay let me show you as  you can see this whole spray of flowers is already  

gone so it needs to be removed you can  cut at the bottom of the flower spray  

what a huge amount of work because you have these  arches all the way along and the orchids go all  

the way above us yeah you need to trace this down  yeah and if sometimes though if the whole whole  

plant the flowers have been faded you can remove  the entire plant and then you tie on a fresh one

and then you place it on this gap  here arrange the flowers at the right  

position so that the visitor  can see that you just lie here

yeah it's not beautiful it's done

great effort goes into the preservation  of the island's historic green spaces  

but singapore's city planners are  also determined to create new ones  

this 250 acre nature park in downtown marina  bay is built on land reclaimed from the sea  

and every night its futuristic  forest puts on a spectacular show

these gardens by the bay are said to contain  250 000 plants and these enormous tree light  

structures that rise up to 50 meters are  themselves covered in flowers and photovoltaic  

cells and in the evening they erupt in a  light show which is a must for every visitor

such vivid imagination such a big investment a  great technical achievement a unique combination  

of greenery and entertainment that is  intended i think to put singapore ahead  

next time i'll explore the world's  biggest subterranean train depot  

this looks like an underground city  of skyscrapers and enjoy the latest  

developments in urban farming is to  singapore's food self-sufficiency

struggling to find a diagnosis of 15  strong team treat a seriously ill man  

and big challengers as several people  tend to a regular vista hospital at nine

you