Luxury on the line: All aboard the Eastern & Oriental Express

Paul Theroux travelled the length of Asia in 1974, a trip that resulted in The Great Railway Bazaar. "Ever since childhood," he wrote, "I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it." Theroux's trip involved all manner of rolling stock, but in 1974 there was no Eastern & Oriental Express linking Singapore with Bangkok.

When everything is going according to plan, the "E&O" traces the length of the Malayan Peninsula and takes its passengers on a journey through South-east Asia's colonial past. The train feels as though it should have been there forever: transporting British officers from steamers docking in Singapore up to their new postings in Kuala Lumpur or Penang, taking writers including Somerset Maugham off to gather exotic details for Far Eastern short stories, or delivering Malay princes back to their istanas (palaces) after a university education in Britain.

Everything about the journey points to an older age – to a time when sunset over this particular corner of empire meant a whisky stengah on the veranda and mandatory dressing for dinner. The train has sumptuous, old-fashioned décor, all brass lamps and rosewood and elm panelling. The locomotive's name, Mat Salleh, is also colonial-era: it is a mildly derogatory Malay term for "white man", deriving from a corruption of "mad sailor".

The Orient Express' stylish sleeping quarters

In fact, the E&O has been running only since 1993, when it became the first train to make the trip between Singapore and the Thai capital; previously passengers had to change at the Malaysian-Thai border between the railway networks. Over these 16 years, though, it has become as much of an institution as the hotels many of the passengers stay in at either end of the journey: the Oriental in Bangkok, and Raffles in Singapore.

Read more...