Current Time in Ulu Bedok, Singapore

Ulu Bedok is the name given to the inland portion of the Bedok district in eastern Singapore. In Malay the word ulu means upstream or interior, and it distinguished this area from the coastal settlements that lay closer to the sea. Today the name survives mainly in older maps and local usage, covering the neighbourhoods that stretch north from Bedok town centre towards Bedok Reservoir, Chai Chee, Kaki Bukit and the boundary with Tampines. The terrain is gently undulating, and the district is threaded with canals, parks and tree-lined roads.

The wider Bedok area is home to close to three hundred thousand people, and the inland neighbourhoods hold a large share of that population in blocks of public housing built from the 1970s onwards. Residents commute across the island for work, while nearby industrial estates at Kaki Bukit and Ubi provide jobs in engineering, printing, logistics, food production and small manufacturing, and the shopping centres and markets of Bedok North supply everyday needs.

Before urban development this was quiet countryside. Malay and Chinese villages stood among rubber smallholdings, vegetable gardens, pig and poultry farms and patches of secondary forest, connected by dirt tracks to the coast road. From the 1950s onwards enormous quantities of sand were dug from the inland hills to build up the reclaimed coastline of the East Coast, leaving deep pits. One of these was allowed to fill with water and became Bedok Reservoir, now the centrepiece of the district. Comprehensive new town development followed in the 1970s and 1980s, replacing the villages with high-rise estates, schools and community facilities in one of the fastest urban transformations anywhere in Asia.

Bedok Reservoir Park is the main attraction, a large body of water surrounded by a popular walking and jogging loop of about four and a half kilometres, with fitness stations, a rope adventure course, waterfront restaurants and facilities for kayaking, canoeing and dragon boating. Otters, monitor lizards and kingfishers are regularly seen along the banks. Bedok Town Park, the linear park connectors that link the reservoir to the coast, and the sports and swimming complexes provide further recreation, while the hawker centres of Bedok North and Chai Chee are known for inexpensive and excellent local food.

Daily life is thoroughly multicultural, with Chinese, Malay and Indian communities sharing the same estates. Void decks beneath the blocks host weddings, funerals, festivals and children's play, wet markets open early each morning, and mosques, temples and churches serve their congregations within walking distance of one another. Residents' committees organise sports, classes and celebrations throughout the year.

The Downtown Line of the MRT serves Bedok North, Bedok Reservoir and Kaki Bukit stations, linking the district to the city centre, and the East West Line and a dense bus network are close by, with Changi Airport only a short ride away. Numerous schools, a polytechnic and technical education campuses are located nearby.

Ulu Bedok illustrates how Singapore turned quiet rural interior land into a green, well-connected residential district within a single generation.