Travelling the Orient on ‘Velvet Rails’ by Mark Eveleigh
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I hurried, hot, sweating and bedraggled away from the clamouring taxi rank outside Bangkok's Hualamphong Station and stumbled towards a row of distinctive green and cream carriages on platform 3.
I was loaded with all the acquired paraphernalia of several weeks on assignment in one of South East Asia’s slimiest, most leech-infested jungles and was aware that in style and comportment I fell far short of the other wayfarers who were making their way down the platform. A smiling carriage steward by the name of Mr. Pana was far too well-mannered to express surprise at my travel-worn appearance, however, as he ushered me into the diminutive but sumptuous cherry and elmwood cocoon that was to be my home for the next 65 hours.
“Just ring anytime Mr Mark,” he said, indicating a buzzer that was marked ‘attendant,’ “I’m at your service round-the-clock.”
Luxurious Train Journey
The Eastern & Oriental Express is the world’s most luxurious and atmospheric train journey. Following in the lines of the famous Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, this truly oriental rail-route connects Bangkok and Singapore with what has been described (despite a notoriously bumpy track) as 1,932 kilometres of ‘velvet rails.’
Although it is a relatively new venture (the first run was in 1993) the E&O already seems to have won an honorary place as one of South East Asia’s most venerable and historical ‘colonial institutions.’
There is a powerful mood of timelessness that seems to echo back to the days of old Siam and Malaya – or even the British Raj. Much as we have been sensitised and educated today about the excesses and injustice of the colonial system it seems that many of us are tempted, at least for a short time, to sample the luxury and comfort of that golden age of rail travel.
Dinner on the E & O
I had not been in my cabin for long – Mr. Pana had disappeared to find a much-needed iron and I was lathering myself with Bvlgari green tea shower-gel in a small but cleverly laid out en-suite bathroom – when the clipped German accent of the train manager came over the PA system. Dinner was about to be served in the dining cars in the middle of the row of 21 carriages.
“Chentlemen vill feel most comfortable,” the manager warned us, “in a minimum of jacket and tie…although dressing up is also encouraged.”
“Also, complying viz the current global trend,” he went on to say, “vee ask that you please confine smoking to the smoker’s section of the Bar Car and the open-air observation deck at the rear of the train.”
The unspoken implication seemed to be that once the public masses have got over their silly and whimsical aversion to dying of cancer the E&O would once again be ready to take up its hallowed place as the last honourable bastion for cigar-smoking colonels and pipe-puffing diplomats.
The rhythmic, staccato clatter that would be a constant backdrop to life onboard for the 65 passengers and 40 staff was already becoming familiar by the time I (‘comfortably’ attired as forewarned) made my wobbly way through the polished carriages to the Bar Car for a pre-dinner drink.
The Orient Express
Little could Agatha Christie have imagined when she penned her best-selling Murder on the Orient Express that in drafting out her list of colourful characters she would also be type-casting the attitude and appearance of the typical Orient Express traveller seventy years later and half a world away. Walking into the bar car that first evening I realised with a barely concealed smile that Miss Christie may well have recognised the portly Swiss Orson-Welles look-alike who was swaying dramatically on his heels as he held forth to a stocky Texan who sported the crew-cut and dwindling athleticism of a US Marine colonel. A jolly Russian couple (the modern version of old-time cinematographers with handy-cam perpetually whirring) nursed matching Bloody Marys while they talked to a younger man whom I later found out was a tail-gunner on Tornado bombers (in earlier times Agatha Christie might have called him a bombardier).
It is possible to opt for a private table but I was seated with a South African expert on world economy, based in Sydney, and an American micro-finance advisor, based in Jakarta. Starched Thai waiters served shitake and enoki mushroom soup with truffle, followed by exquisite terrine of tiger prawn and mango, drizzled with vanilla and lobster vinaigrette. The average age among the 65 passengers was around 50 and almost without exception they were extremely well-travelled.
As often happens in groups like this even the most unlikely of acquaintances eventually seemed to find common ground, if only through the fact that they had all been inspired and seduced by that strange and infectious nostalgia for rail-travel. Conversations often swung to the strange coincidences among people who had lived or travelled at the same times in Johannesburg, Lagos, Muscat, Nairobi, Pittsburgh, Paris…
Timeless and Placeless
Just as the romantic setting was timeless it was also curiously ‘placeless.’ Once the lush patchworks of paddy-fields and the looming peaks of the Myanmar border country had been abruptly swallowed by the tropical night we could have been anywhere in the world. The interior design is more 1930’s chic than oriental, but maybe this is not surprising since the diamond-motif marquetry is styled on the train that co-starred with Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 movie Shanghai Express. Hence the décor, while beautiful, owes less to the East than it does to an early Hollywood impression of what a luxurious Asian train should look like.
As the marketing literature says, the atmosphere harks back to an age of ‘rubber plantations, ceiling fans, white-coated houseboys, and cocktails on the veranda.’ You often feel like a character in an old Somerset Maugham story. You visit the reflexologist in the perpetually camphor-scented reading carriage to have your feet pampered to, or the fortune-teller for a touch of eastern mystery or to hear the news you've been hoping for (bad news is, predictably, less forthcoming).
In the evening there are visits from local traditional dancers or the pianist croons the great tunes of Ella and Louis (and at the slightest prompting is always ready to leap forward half a century to belt out a few Elvis numbers). In the years he has been working on the E&O he has performed for such as Dame Shirley Bassey, Bryan Adams, Neil Young and even Andrew Lloyd-Webber. I didn’t ask if Mr Lloyd-Webber had also requested Elvis.
To See Life
“Trains are wonderful,” Agatha Christie once enthused. “To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers. In fact, it is to see life.”
If there is one disadvantage to travel on the Eastern & Oriental Express, however, it is that you actually see very little of life. You travel in such cosseted, pampered luxury that even the frequent excursions beyond the frigid air-conditioning system into the dense, humid air of the observation deck feels like a culture-shock. In a region as vibrant and friendly as Thailand and Malaysia you are about as removed from the real life of the local people as it is possible to be.
I woke to Mr. Pana’s gentle knock on the door and opened the curtains to watch the Far Eastern dawn as I breakfasted on buttered croissants, fresh bread, yoghurt, orange juice and coffee from an E&O embossed silver pot. You feel vaguely guilty though as you watch paddy workers in conical ‘coolie hats’ struggling knee-deep through flooded fields. Barefoot children pause in their trek to school to shout and wave happily at the train.
Several passengers seemed to be primarily motivated by the opportunity for a whirlwind insight into the South East Asian lifestyle and landscapes but, as is unavoidable on a four-day trip through three countries, most wished they had a chance to see more.
Shore Excursions
There are several cultural ‘shore excursions’ (a term that amply illustrates Orient-Express’s cruise-ship background) but even at these times you are, as one passenger put it, ‘wrapped in cotton wool.’ The duration of each of these stops is naturally limited but you are left with a feeling that your ever-attentive chaperones have done their utmost to ensure that you do not come into contact with anything that surpasses the limits of the ‘picturesquely exotic.’
The train takes a detour off the main track to trundle through spectacular jungle landscapes to Kanchanaburi and the ‘Bridge on the River Kwai.’ This is the most famous point on the infamous 415km Death Railway which cost the lives of almost 30,000 British, Dutch, Australian, American prisoners of war and as many as 100,000 Thai and Malay slaves during the Japanese occupation.
Having travelled the length of the Death Railway by motorbike many years ago maybe I had unfair expectations for the fleeting boat-trip and the one-hour tour of the Thailand-Burma Railway Museum and the neighbouring War Cemetery. Among the ‘shore-going’ crowd of E&O passengers there were clearly many who were struggling to get a real sense of the horror of the Death Railway.
Rather than purporting to offer an insight into Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore though, the E&O is a world in itself and a unique experience in its own right. Through the evening we rolled towards the Malay border. Paddyfields gave way to coconut groves, sprawling plantations of oil palm and copses of rubber trees, each scored with the diagonal slices of tappers’ knives. Each village and lonely shack was shaded by trees that bare rich harvests of mango, banana and papaya. In this rich soil and dank humidity you imagine that you can almost hear the vegetation grow.
Even at the Malay border your contact with the local people is zero. But this time it is with a real sense of gratitude that you hand passport and customs papers over to the compartment steward for processing while you take advantage of a temporarily stationary train to enjoy a less wobbly shower and an extended breakfast.
Domes and Minarets
South of the border the ornately gilded roofs of Thai Wats are replaced by the statuesque domes and soaring minarets of Malay mosques, but the ubiquitous smiles and waves remain the same. In mid-morning the train stops for its second ‘shore excursion.’ Penang, at the entrance to the Straits of Malacca, was the first British settlement in Malaya. When one Captain Light was commissioned to clear the rainforest he came up with an original and very effective method; he fired several cannon filled with gold pieces into the jungle, and the resulting scramble of the amassed Malay labourers denuded the whole area in record time.
Signs of colonial power remain in the form of the Fort Cornwallis battlements, City Hall and the imposing Eastern and Oriental Hotel but it is the Chinese who continue to leave the greatest mark on Penang’s character. Today Penang is an atmospheric town of trishaws, pastel-painted shop-houses, herbal pharmacies and temples that are permanently infused with incense.
Some of the most remarkable buildings are the traditional kongsi clan-houses, which are still maintained by donations from the descendents of ‘Straits Chinese’ who have settled all over the world. The most magnificent is the Khoo Kongsi. It was so utterly ostentatious that nobody was truly surprised when the roof caught fire on opening night in 1901; the ancestors were clearly outraged that anyone had the audacity to build something so spectacular on mortal soil.
Trains and Trishaws
The ubiquitous pedal-powered trishaw remains an icon of old Penang. In India the passenger sits behind the rider, in Singapore on a wicker chair alongside, but in Penang you sit in front so that you often feel that you are being used as a battering ram as the vehicle bullys its way out into the jostling traffic. But in Penang the trishaw is king of the road and all other road-users do their utmost to get out of the way.
There are 300 trishaws in Penang today (compared with about 2,500 half a century ago) and it was one of the highlights of our ‘shore excursions’ to be part of amassed fleet of fifty of these gaudily-decorated vehicles as we rattled through the streets of Penang to our appointment for a buffet dinner at The Eastern and Oriental Hotel.
South from Penang we clattered on through the ever-changing Malaysian landscape. The twin steel ribbons twisted up through the mysterious, jungle-clad mountains and then stretched out across a narrow dyke over Bukit Merah Lake. Out on the teak-panelled observation deck the air cooled noticeably and within moments a heavy monsoon storm was driving down and forked lightning was spearing towards the lake.
Arrival in Singapore
It was midnight by the time we arrived at Kuala Lumpur’s magnificent colonial railway station. Heading south from KL the ride was markedly smoother and the previously sedate pace of Asia’s mostly stately train accelerated, as if she was exhilarated to make the last downhill run to the steel and glass high-rises of Singapore.
Four days on the E&O suddenly did not seem nearly enough and as if to try to prolong the journey as much as possible some of us stayed out on the observation deck until well into the early hours.
“There are always some passengers with tears in their eyes when we say goodbye at the end of the journey,” Miss Bam the Thai cocktail waitress told me. “It’s funny but it’s nice to know that the trip is so important for them…it’s as if they feel that the arrival of the E&O in Singapore is somehow the end of an era.”