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