Geography Now! SINGAPORE

all right sing a poor if any of you guys saw my older videos you'll know i had the amazing experience of visiting this country a couple years ago my singaporean friends nigel ben and kevin will be appearing again in this episode i will say i get why singapore is such an internationally renowned hot spot it's a small country with big ambition it went from a few dilapidated wooden stilt homes and boating fishermen to literally a boat on top of three skyscrapers either way one thing's for sure singapore definitely isn't singa poor is it my turn it's time to learn geography hey everybody i'm your host barb's welcome to the jewel of asia the only place in the world to have gotten their independence against their will we'll get into that later but one thing you can do on your own will is get a geography now mug or t-shirt or drawstring bag at geographynow.com it's not selling out if it's my brand oh in any case get ready because we're about to look at the globe and find this gem of a nation in three two singapore or pulau ujong anyway it's the world's only island city-state something is clearly happening here so let's go to the globe first of all the country is located in southeast asia just at the southern tip of the malay peninsula to the west you have the strait of malacca and to the south and east you have the real islands of indonesia singapore is made up of one main island singapore which makes about 95 of the country's landmass as well as 63 other smaller satellite islands and islets more are actually set to come as they do extensive land reclamation projects creating new artificial islands in fact to this day singapore has actually increased its land mass by 22 since independence through land reclamation in fact if you look over here at the tuas peninsula you can even see it is currently being reclaimed every day and is set for completion by 2030. over here jurong island was actually a merger of seven previous islands reclaimed into one and is now used as an industrial complex besides singapore island though only two other islands are residentially inhabited pulau ubin and sentosa island otherwise the rest are used for other purposes like the military laboratories wildlife sanctuaries and so on now the country doesn't exactly have any official administrative divisions but when it comes to building sections there are five development councils that cluster communities together mostly for government housing projects when elections come up though they do have group and single member constituency neighborhoods these areas are allotted a certain number of seats in parliament so as to allow a somewhat balanced representation of people groups in the country although the country is only about 725 square kilometers in size making it the 20th smallest country in area they actually have a lot of air transport they have seven military airports and airstrips and two public airports yes two everyone thinks singapore's changi international voted the best airport in the world for several consecutive years in a row is the only one but if you go just 16 kilometers north you'll find this hidden little guy seletar airport it operates flights to indonesia and malaysia as well as private flights and a flight training school otherwise the country has an incredibly complex and highly operational network of roads rail lines and shipping docks there are two bridges that connect to malaysia over the johor strait you have the busiest one going into the city of johor baru at the johor causeway bridge in the north and then you have the second link bridge toll road that enters into the west side people usually take this road to go to legoland malaysia after shanghai singapore has the world's second largest shipping container port able to transport nearly 40 million containers annually from there many other commercial ports are used for the public like the harbor front center and the marina bay cruise center now you can't talk about singapore without mentioning the mrt the oldest busiest and most costly rail system in southeast asia it also has the longest driverless network in the world and some of the deepest subway tunnels in the world and finally fun fact christmas island and the cocos and keeling islands were at one point a part of singapore under british rule but then were transferred to australia in 1957. for real though the airport is so cool so going back to infrastructure singapore is kind of internationally renowned for having very strict laws when it comes to things like car and home ownership basically all cars are required to have an iu or in-vehicle unit a device that's installed in the windshield and is basically a prepaid account that has money deducted from it when you drive under the erp toll passes on top of that owning a car is pretty difficult enough as it is here is ben to explain um the government highly advocates for the use of public transportation like the buses and the metro system which in singapore we call the we call the mrt and on top of that in order to regulate um the number of car owners and number of cars on the road in singapore if one wants to buy a car we not only have to pay for the car itself we have to pay for the certificate of entitlement and that certificate that piece of paper can go up to thirty thousand dollars and that thirty thousand dollars actually varies according to the season because what happens is this coe of the goes by a balloting system and this coe lasts for a period of ten years after ten years you have the option of renewing the coe for another five years or you have to straight the car and get a new car and get another new coe for another 10 years so crazy rich asians and ben about home ownership explain how does it work in singapore what's the hdb go if i am not wrong i think 90 of the land here in singapore belongs to the country hdb is in charge of building apartments built apartment buildings for most singaporeans to live in so about 80 percent of the singaporean populations and these flats or these apartments um we may say that we own it but technically it's at least for 99 years but considering that the country isn't even 99 years old in itself nobody quite knows exactly what a completion of lease would look like but yeah and that is how we manage to you know keep everyone sheltered thank you ben this means housing operates easier and faster because you don't have to worry about red tape issues like department approval or ordinance laws basically the point of real estate in singapore is you buy to live not really to invest yeah you will never see one of those hgtv flipper shows airing here in any case time to move on to the famous places segment the fountain of wealth orchard road has like the best shopping chinatown with the street market and buddha tooth relic temple and museum kampong glam with lane and the sultan mosque little india with the mustafa center and the sri vira maka liaman temple halpar villa universal studios the night safari the henderson waves jurong bird park marina bay sands and the rooftop infinity pool so many museums cemeteries and art galleries and probably the most iconic landmark the gardens by the bay with the super trees and the cloud forest and flower dome yeah those super trees are really cool i was lucky enough to see them when i visited it's crazy how much singapore puts an emphasis on coalescing concrete with nature which brings us to now singapore gets its name from the word singapura derived from sanskrit meaning lion city even though there's no lions here nobody knows exactly why it's called singapore then but the more popular theory comes from the malay annals claiming that this guy sailed here and in the 13th century it was like whoa i think i see a lion is that a lion no there are no lions in this part of the world that must have been a tiger not too late i already saw it already made up my mind singapore so yeah that's basically it in any case for singapore with limited space comes limited environmental responsibility here's the uh motion graphic first of all as the country is heavily urbanized singapore has lost about 90 percent of its historical forest and the majority of what's left is found either in the sun gabulo wetland or the bukit timah nature reserve and the surrounding green areas in the center of the main island speaking of which here you can find the highest point pukitima hill at about 163 meters tall this notable area in the center of the country has the most well-known freshwater reservoirs that supply the inhabitants of the country like the mcritchie reservoir the central water catchment and the upper celatar reservoir however it is this one the lower pierce reservoir that is the source of the longest river of the country the kalang river which is more like a controlled still creek flowing about 10 kilometers down to the largest body of fresh water the marina bay reservoir which is actually fed by five rivers this reservoir alone supplies about 10 of the country's freshwater needs it started in 2008 with salt water but then in two years they desalinated and drained the remaining salt water the freshwater bay is contained from the saltwater sea only by a narrow dam called the marina barrage only about 10 meters wide keep in mind this guy over here the pandan reservoir to the west contains more water and surface area but the water is non-portable and is used to service the industrial sector as the island only lies about one and a half degrees north of the equator they have a tropical rainforest climate with relative uniform temperatures throughout the year however for nine months of the year they experience two monsoon seasons between november to march and june to september on top of that they have an average 84.2 humidity level and it's not uncommon to go up to 100 especially on rainy days yep pretty rainy in fact there's even a saying by the rain by the sweat either way you will get wet it's like florida i'm like florida man i think yes keith you you are florida man but what it's worth though as the country becomes more urban and developed they are trying to preserve as much nature as they can which is kind of a challenge i mean it's like skyscrapers coming up everywhere what are you gonna do one very creative way they've been doing so is through the tactic of fusing their concrete and steel foundations with living hedges of flora what the hell am i doing with my hands to explain more guess who's back noah how about that i'm back let's get to it with singapore the very continuity of their country depends on balance they have taken many steps to integrate vertical greenery and as much space as they can you can see this in many places like the oasia hotel downtown which literally has vines growing all over the girl exterior in addition there actually are a few small plots of land designated for agriculture mostly in the northwest quadrant of the country here there are over two thousand farms averaging about two and a half acres each nonetheless they invest heavily in the finance technology business and service sectors the country puts a huge emphasis on encouraging entrepreneurs with free trade policies and easily accessible government grants and funds they have the third least corrupt economy with low tax rates in addition all workers under 55 are required to give 20 of their wages to the central providence fund which is a social savings fund like a pension employers give 17 of earnings so long story short these are some of the main factors that made the country so prosperous so fast and speaking of fast here comes our animal correspondent gary harlow here we are with poppy hollow [Music] now with a country that's over 90 urbanized you would think that animals would have no way of thriving here but you're wrong and don't you forget it because of the climate singapore is still able to host over 60 mammals nearly 400 bird species and about 110 reptiles 30 amphibians most of the animals live in one of the five established nature reserves four on the main island and one on palo alto the most common mammal you'll probably find are long-tailed macaque monkeys if you're lucky you might come across one of the incredibly rare cinder pangolins that are highly protected and along certain westland areas you can find artists nonetheless out of all these real animals the national animal of the country is the mere lion a fictional creature that's half lion half fish speaking of legendary creatures we go back to noah gildemaster the master of guilds thanks gary tell caleb i say hi and with that it's the time you hungry people have all been waiting for food singapore takes food seriously let's put it this way some people come into singapore just for the food now usually i take on this segment but singaporean kevin knows his food so i'm gonna pass this over to him kevin take it away so over here we have an incredibly rich history of mixing different flavors from our different people groups and some of the best places to try this is what we would call a hawker center a hawker center is basically a big food court that's filled with many many stalls or push carts for people to choose different foods from some of these small venues are even michelin star rated there are over 107 hawker centers in singapore but the largest one is the chinatown complex food center that houses more than 260 mini stalls the next time you come to singapore you have to try some of our local food the ones that we're most well known for are laksa chicken rice rojak chocolate hokkien meat chicken clay pot rice chen dole ice kachong roti prata by the way nobody here actually drinks a singapore slain it's basically a tourist you can make thanks kevin yeah lots of fusion with singapore let's discuss more on that in the next segment shall we oh why thank you mr noah in the words of fiction writer william gibson singapore is like disneyland with a death penalty it's shiny it's pretty it's clean it's efficient but it does kind of come at a cost of heavy restrictions in some authoritarian and technocratic protocol this kind of puts singapore in a weird state of like prosperity at the cost of certain societal compromises it's a hard topic to address because there's so many layers that go into it and i suggest you just talk to a singaporean if we want to know more on top of that everything kind of functions in four fours clearly you could tell by now there's nothing in here i'm just using it as a prop sad i know we'll get more into that in a bit but first the graph singapore has a population just under six million and often ranks as the number one or number two spot for the country with the lowest fertility rate on earth with only about 0.9 children per couple it also ranks number one as the most competitive economy on earth with a spot in the top five highest gdp per capita countries as well the largest group of people in the country identify as ethnically chinese but keep in mind this number also includes an undetermined percentage of people that are mixed with chinese like the purana ken from there the next largest group are the malays somewhere around 13.5 keep in mind this category also may include indonesian migrants that register as malays though and the third largest group are the indians at around 10 percent mostly south tamil and malayalam speaking indians however keep in mind this registered category may also include general indian subcontinent individuals from other countries like bangladesh pakistan and sri lanka from there the remainder of the population are other groups mainly eurasians caucasians japanese koreans filipinos and vietnamese they use the singapore dollar as their currency which by the way is pegged and interchangeable with the brunei dollar they use the type g plug outlet and they drive on the left side of the road remember they were once a british territory the country has four official languages each pertaining to the main ethnic groups they are mandarin malay tamil and english nobody does this why is this a four for me and there's technically a fifth way of speaking singlish which is kind of like an english creole that mixes all the languages okay here's the guys explaining so in singapore there is a local slang that's called singlish and singlish is basically english that incorporates elements of chinese or malay into it like la which we use as an emphasis before or after a sentence for example the weather is so hot laughs see how because so many of these terms you go online and check okay i'm very tired another way of speaking english is by mixing the different languages we have here in the country together uncle where is in english is mandarin they all go bang it's a mixture of dialect hokkien and also the malay language now when you're buying food in the hawker center and you're not going to be able to eat there and you need to take away you can tell the uncle that you need to uncle want chicken rice please thank you guys now in a way you can kind of see singapore as a tri-ethnic or pluri national country kind of like belgium with the walloons and flemish or bosnia and herzegovina with the serbs croats and bosnians actually bosnia herzegovina is not the best example because all three are basically the same thing but you get the point and the country is kind of calibrated to preserve this social structure like you're required to register your ethnic group on your papers and passports this has been kind of like a slight inconvenience for some people of mixed ancestry like the puranakin which are kind of like descendants between chinese and malays and they're kind of like their own unique people group however these days more people are mixing ethnic lines and giving birth to biracial children this has led to them adding a mixed race option on paperwork in 2011 which adds a whole new dimension to society and yeah here's nigel explaining a little bit more on that today the four most common language are english malay chinese and tamil now these languages can be seen on the street signs advertisements and public notices we also have dialects which are spoken but unwritten languages in school students are taught the importance of racial harmony and we also have a day which celebrates this diversity our history began with the malays as the first inhabitants people from china india europe and other countries started settling down in the early 19th century when it comes to housing it's quite natural for people to want to live in a community where their neighbours speak the same language and share the same culture but to prevent ethnic enclaves an ethnic quota was implemented for public housing so a certain ratio is assigned to each block denominating the percentage of malays chinese indians and other races and by doing this none of the three major ethnic groups were disadvantaged every race is now represented in each neighborhood thank you nigel yeah the racial quota unfortunately this also means depending on your race it could be easier or harder to buy a home depending on the location it's kind of like a weird thing that nobody really likes to talk about but everybody knows that race can kind of be used in this way in singapore it's it's the way how it is in any case all of this is obviously enforced through the government which is kind of like a tight semi-autocratic one-party system called the people's action party it has been the dominant party since they forcefully gained independence against their will that's right after the british left in 1959 they deliberately wanted to unify with malaysia but then it was like seriously you're imposing a 20 revenue contribution hike on my fiscal input and have imposed the boomi putara policy pretty sketchy dude well this is malay territory and you did want to join our federation and even after we agreed on a level of autonomy you still had the nerve to be an indignant little that's not possible no because listen if you if you look at the face okay that's it i'm kicking you out parliament vote no i just wanted to negotiate different terms what are you doing no no it is with great sadness that i must announce that our little island has now gained independence [Music] a little exaggerated but literally lee khan you was like sad during his announcement he was even quoted for saying it was a moment of anguish but anyone faith-wise the nation is also quite mixed up as well the largest group being buddhist at around a third of the country the second largest group is actually christians at nearly a fifth of the country's population and from there islam comes in at third at about 14 of the country round again at number four about seven percent are hindus mostly from the indian community so yeah that's that all right enough from me in any case now it's time for the sports part usually art fills in for this segment but he is literally driving back to la he's coming home and uh as you know he can't film while he's in a car so we need a substitute which means uh we're gonna need someone to come in i guess it's gonna be you ian yeah going for the sports part sports part with ian as a small country that puts more of a cultural focus on business and finance sports are usually pushed off with less of a national priority nonetheless everything from bodybuilding to badminton can be found here competition wise their soccer or football team we're four-time winners of the aff championships hey otherwise you can see native sports 2 like foot volleyball or sepak takraw yeah oh wow you got it and the martial art salat native to indonesia and malaysia are often down here as well as an island nation though swimming and water-related activities have always been their specialty nothing was more glorious for the country when joseph schooling was able to not only compete with but beat the man he looked up to michael phelps in the 100 meter butterfly event at the 2016 olympics we still love you michael phelps you're awesome well thanks for having me art sorry you're not here good luck driving uh but do the speed limit thank you the cool thing about singapore is that the people all kind of bring something to the table that everyone can enjoy on a national level enough on that from me though it's time to hand the reins over to our culture correspondent random hannah party people it is good to be back yeah so as mentioned singapore is a diverse country but there are a few things that kind of unite them all it's said singaporeans all have the five great fears kia sue meaning the fear of missing out fomo psc meaning the fear of death kia bo fear of having nothing chang who fear of government and kia bor meaning the fear of your wife do you fear me or no answers no i think that's probably a good thing i don't want you to be afraid of me this is why singaporeans are known for having two favorite pastimes cueing and choping they hate missing out it is sad that if there's a long line it has to be for something good you don't even have to know what the line is for and chope is the art of securing a seat during meal times at restaurants it's a mad dash every man and woman for themselves to reserve a seat people will usually place cheap personal items like a pack of tissue or a pen to claim a table we totally do that here due to the form of colonial ties to the british you might notice much of singaporean culture is anglicized for example many people may choose to give english first names to their children in addition much of the traditional architecture is a fusion that blends hints of british and asia none more exemplified better than the 20th century style shop house these narrow structures are known for having covered walkways called five foot ways to help residents stay dry during the rain while shopping certain festivals are celebrated by everyone too like the heritage and food festivals in july their version of black friday is called the great singapore sale where things go up to 70 off i'd like that and you can't forget their national day august 9th commemorating their independence singapore also in a way has a culture of appreciating discipline crime rates are very low in singapore partially because ramifications can be severe and corporal punishment is common and accepted even in schools sometimes singapore is called the fine city because you can get fines for certain things like oh i thought it meant fine fine you can get fines for eating or drinking on the mrt playing loud annoying music in public chewing or selling gum unless it's prescription also technically singapore does not have a complete freedom of speech even when making debates at speaker's corner in hong kong park they must register the topic with the government prior to speaking and are still monitored nonetheless the country moves forward pretty well even amidst these seemingly harsh policies they want to maintain order and for them the best way is to do it this way the singapore way the one person that will never be in order is keith so here is keith's music segment [Music] okay disclaimer by the way i love funkadelic they're an amazing band george clinton is an amazing keyboard player due to fair use law don't sue that's my commentary goodbye the music culture of singapore is special because it takes influences from the chinese malays and indians in the early 20th century traditional chinese street opera troops would set up and perform either in music clubs or during festivals the art has declined in the past few decades but you can still find some performances being done especially at the chinese opera institute or the chinese theatre circle near downtown for the malay community it's not uncommon to hear ensembles performances called dondang and keron these are usually done at special events and wedding for the indian community south indian raga ballads are not uncommon and north indian bangladesh dances are usually seen at special events as well in a more contemporary sense though in this 1960s there he basically had a wannabes beatles band you know what i'm saying just kidding kind of artists started to experiment with bilingual lyrics and pop music and bands like crescendos and october cherries for a while in the 1980s and 1990s a new genre inspired by taiwanese country music called xingyao swept singapore by storm today pop music has become more progressive genre with many artists singing in english they even won the first and only season of you know asian idol i could only imagine the asian simon cowell haha recently many metal bands like iron maiden slayer and dream theater have made singapore a stop on international tours which has led to a new interest in metal amongst the teenaged angsty youth in any case the most important venue for musical performances today would be the s blonde located right on marina bay downtown all right that's it for me my name is keith and as you can see we have these wonderful teeth shirts you can wear this shirt on a train and maybe even a plane later thank you keith and hannah and now famous people we're just gonna kind of rush through this historical and political figures like these there's a lot of actors like these remember jet li got citizenship dj kygo was actually born here too and for authors you know the guy who wrote crazy rich asians and there's a lot more and speaking of crazy and rich and asians let's talk about singapore's diplomatic outreach shall we singapore has virtually no conflicts with any other country and today they have diplomatic relations with 189 countries for what's worth though they know how to play the global chess board pretty well for one they are a member of the commonwealth of nations which of course opens up their ties to 54 other nations across the world in shared cooperation treaties generally other anglophone nations get along with singapore all around the world from africa to the caribbean back to europe this means of course that the uk is a close ally they have a mutual defense agreement called the five power defense arrangement which includes australia new zealand and malaysia they are the fourth largest investor in business with high levels of stock ownership many singaporeans also either study abroad in the uk or even have family and live in the uk the usa is a huge partner with a free trade agreement and the military cooperates frequently singapore's air force has a detachment in arizona's luke air force base and the us navy is allowed to use singapore's ports china and specifically hong kong are both very close friends obviously as the majority of the population in singapore are of chinese descent mostly of the southern parts of china like fujian guangdong and hainan collectively china and hong kong are also the largest trading partners reaching about 100 billion dollars in revenue nonetheless relations kind of fluctuate depending on how much interaction singapore has with taiwan singapore does have military facilities in taiwan and in 2004 they put bilateral relations on hold when the former prime minister took a private trip to taipei hong kong though is kind of like the cousin across the sea as both were former uk colonies and they have very similar structures in the way how they function with business and government india of course is a close friend as well not only due to the diaspora population of indians in singapore but with huge economic ties as well in the 90s india initiated the look east policy in which they decided to expand its commercial cultural and military ties to southeast asia with that it's probably safe to say the closest countries to singapore would probably be their fellow asean members more specifically malaysia and indonesia now with indonesia and malaysia there is kind of like a sieged mentality of past unfavorable events like the borneo conflict of 63 that singapore was kind of dragged into but they've generally moved on and moved forward all three countries operate along the strait of malacca the busiest choke point of trade in the world so they all kind of have to work together indonesia is the third largest trading partner and in 2005 signed a memorandum of understanding lots of important resources come from indonesia and many indonesians get along with the malay singaporeans as they have very similar cultures malaysia on the other hand is kind of like the divorced wife that decided to stay in a business relationship they are the second largest business partner each country is able to easily cross borders and immigrate the malays often have family on the other side and intermarry singaporeans love crossing into johor to shop where everything is like a quarter of the price it would be in singapore and overall the awkwardness of the breakup is pretty much non-existent to this day all three of these countries are solid together by the way i just realized one of you guys sent me this hat i should have worn it for the whole video in conclusion with singapore everything is kind of about balancing you know infrastructure nature culture and the future with the right amount of negotiation compensation and discipline it's just kind of how they do things here stay tuned slovakia is coming up next [Music]

Channel: Geography Now

Views: 1,569,659

Keywords: Geography, facts, info, cool, education, learning, countries, history, class, lesson, funny, travel, Singapore, Asia, Sports, Art

Id: w-z4q7F5Bcs

Length: 28min 7sec (1687 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020