NZ train now a Silver Star in Asia

The view from The Eastern & Oriental Express. Picture / Jim Eagles

The train that was once our Silver Star now journeys across Malaysia.

Talk about extreme makeover. If I hadn't been told the identity of the elegant creature awaiting me on platform 12 of Singapore's Keppel Railway Station I would never have believed it.

The last time I saw this old girl, nearly 20 years ago, she was the dowdy old Silver Star, plying our main trunk line between Auckland and Wellington.

But now, following an amazing transformation into one of the grand dames of rail, she is known as the Eastern & Oriental Express.

Resplendent in green and gold livery, she offers one of the world's classic railway journeys - 2030km from Singapore, up the length of the Malaysia-Thailand peninsula, to Bangkok. It is olde-worlde travel from the days when rail was romantic, life was an adventure, and travelling was done in style.

As you step from the hot and scruffy station platform, with its smelly toilets, into one of the 22 carriages you enter a different world of cool, wood-panelled elegance and almost decadently luxurious living.

Barely has the train clattered out of the urban squalor of trackside Singapore and across the 1056m causeway linking the island to Malaysia than it is time for lunch in one of the two restaurant carriages.

As the oil-palm plantations and traditional villages of Johor rumble past at 60km/h we pampered passengers enjoy some pumpkin and yellow pepper soup in coconut cream, then aromatic confit of duck served with oriental risotto in fivespice and soya jus, accompanied by a glass of Australian chardonnay and followed by refreshing fruit tartlets and cafe de columbia.

You could imagine the fabulously wealthy Sultan of Johor, who built the first railway line in this part of the world in 1869 - unfortunately it was made of wood and the ants ate it - nodding in approval at the quality of the food and the superb silver service.

After that it is time to sit back and watch the complex picture of life in modern Malaysia unfolding like a documentary outside the window of our apartment.

Huge modern apartment blocks and luxury mansions pop up amid the dilapidated corrugated-iron shacks - often with satellite aerials on the roofs - and traditional thatched houses sitting on stilts above the twin menaces of snakes and floods.

Although Malaysia is a mainly Muslim land and dotted with mosques, you still see tiny shrines and huge ornate temples.

Bright green rice paddies, orderly palm-oil plantations, buffaloes grazing in muddy paddocks and slow brown rivers still predominate in the face of the advancing shiny shopping malls, great piles of freshly cut logs, clear-felled forests and factories belching smoke.

It is easy to spend a lazy few hours gazing at this - to our eyes - alien landscape until a knock at the door signals it is time for afternoon tea.

This is tea as Somerset Maugham would expect, with crisp white napkins, a French silver tea service, Italian bone china, boh tea - "like English breakfast but we grow it ourselves", our steward says proudly - and delicious wee cakes.

It is a bit of a challenge to drink tea on a train without slopping it down your shirt but you soon learn not to overfill the cups.

After that it is time for a walk along the long, narrow, swaying passageway to the observation car, which offers a better view of what is going on in the real world.

In Malaysia - but not so much in Thailand - the passing of the train is still an occasion.

Children playing, coming home from school or sweeping the yards of their jerrybuilt homes stop to flash huge smiles and give enthusiastic waves, and when a steward throws out a few cans of soft drink the result is ecstasy.

Adults sitting on sofas under the shade of the trees lining the track offer amiable nods and grins without wasting too much energy. Even the massed rows of motor-scooter riders queuing at the level crossings awaiting our passing wave with surprising enthusiasm.

They are returning home from work and it is time for us to go back to our cabins to shower and dress - at least a jacket and tie for men - for the grand occasion which is dinner on the Eastern & Orient Express.

The brochure advises that "the ambience of the train provides a marvellous opportunity to display some glamour and style, and dressing up is encouraged", and even for a confirmed scruffbag like me it is rather fun.

As we are enjoying another magnificent meal, the train is passing through the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, allowing those not too distracted by the food and wine to spy among its soaring skyscrapers and Moorish mosques the pale blue twin towers of the Petronas building, the tallest in the world.

There is a brief halt in KL, and time for a brief stroll in its impressive colonial-era railway station, before the train moves on, forcing us to check out the bar carriage.

There, passengers can savour a drink and enjoy the resident pianist, who used to play at the New Zealand officers' mess in Singapore and does a good line in Po Karekare Ana.

It is also perhaps the best place to appreciate the train's beautiful decor, with its diamond-shaped marquetry panelling - apparently inspired by the 1932 film Shanghai Express, starring Marlene Dietrich - oriental wall carvings, silk-embroidered pelmets, lotus-flower mirrors and Thai carpets.

Meanwhile the seats in our cabin have been converted into two narrow but perfectly comfortable bunk beds. The brochure for the journey notes that "the train is in motion during the night and a few people find the sensation disturbs their sleep", but I dropped off straight away.

Happily, I also woke early, to find the train had stopped in the centre of Bukit Merah Lake - the line runs along a bank down the middle of the lake - so I could stroll to the deserted observation car to watch the sunrise.

Early morning is perhaps the best time to observe the world from the train.

On the lake we could see the lights coming on in the villages built over the water and the fishermen rowing out in their tiny boats to cast their nets.

Later, as we moved back on to land, people were heading to work, thousands of them swarming along the roads on their scooters, some pausing at roadside stalls for breakfast.

Farmers mostly seem to walk to their fields - one old chap encouraging his small herd of bony cows with a switch 3m long while carrying a white plastic chair over his arm, presumably the better to rest when reaching the grazing spot.

Breakfast was served in our compartment while we watched the children, resplendent in their brightly coloured uniforms, skipping to school.

There was no rest for us, either, as the train stops at Butterworth Station for a trip by bus and ferry to the historic island of Penang, the first British settlement in Malaysia, dating back to 1786.

The capital of Georgetown has a fascinating mixture of architectural styles that combine British, Malay, Chinese, Indian and Thai.

Its diverse origins are best seen in Pitt St - known by locals as Harmony St - which contains Anglican and Catholic churches, Hindu, Buddhist and Chinese temples, and two mosques. Georgetown is also notable for having a magnificent railway station but no tracks. "People could buy their tickets there and then go to the train by boat," our guide says.

We toured the town by trishaw and managed to find the oldest, slowest, rider on the island, his aged legs barely able to get over the slightest hump, and as a result completely lost touch with our group.

But we still reached the wharf in time to catch the ferry back - with a late surge our rider even managed to pass another trishaw, amid much boastful shouting. We were so impressed, relieved and embarrassed that we gave him a tip - much to his surprise (he had probably recognised our accents).

After that it was back to the train for another delicious lunch, another elegant afternoon tea - we asked our steward to omit the cakes, he smiled and brought them anyway, and of course we ate them - another sumptuous dinner and more exotic scenery.

After that there was a display of traditional Thai dancing in the bar car, the delicate poses and finger movements all the more impressive for being performed on a moving floor.

In the morning we were in Thailand, the immigration formalities having been completed while we slept, and the scenery was subtly different.

Vast rubber plantations - each tree with its little bucket to catch the oozing sap - and clusters of banana and pineapple groves lined the tracks.

In the south the fields looked parched - we read in the local paper that the royal rainmaker might be called in - but as the train rumbled north there were flooded rice paddies, ponds with cages full of fish, and cattle grazing in muddy fields.

The towns had a more orderly and modern look, pictures of Thailand's king were everywhere and, because this is primarily a Buddhist country, the temples were bigger and more spectacular.

The people appeared more focused on everyday living and too busy and sophisticated to pay much attention to trains, apart from a monk in a saffron robe who gave a shy smile and, when I smiled back, a huge grin.

Even a group of school children in bright yellow uniforms, taking a lesson under the shade of a trackside tree, stayed focused on their teacher as the express rumbled past.

We were heading on to the most famous, or infamous, line in this part of the world, the Thailand-Burma death railway, where 130,000 Malays, Burmese and Allied prisoners died building it in World War II. At the town of Kanchanaburi our train posed for photos on the Bridge on the River Kwai - the true name is Kwae - made famous by the 1957 film starring Alec Guinness.

Meanwhile, we took to the boats and cruised along the river and under the bridge, toured the disturbing Thailand-Burma Railway Centre and visited the poignant war cemetery with its sad final messages from bereaved parents and sweethearts: "Your Dad is proud of you, son."

Then it was off to the vast sprawl of Bangkok, city of huge golden Buddhas and even bigger traffic jams, where our journey ended and the 21st century awaited. For three days the old Silver Star had taken us through an exotic landscape and into a bygone era of gracious living.

It is a long way from Waikato dairy farms, mugs of tea at Taumarunui and the barren landscapes of the volcanic plateau to the steamy rice paddies of Kedah, silver service dining on the plains of Selangar and the lush jungles of Johor, but this grand old lady of rail has made the transformation with style.

Getting there
There are daily flights from Auckland and Christchurch via Singapore to Bangkok


Eastern & Oriental Express
House of Travel has packages on the Eastern & Oriental Express departures on October 2 or 16 from $3899 a person, share-twin.

This includes return economy airfares on Singapore Airlines into Bangkok and out of Singapore, one night pre-train in Bangkok at Swissotel Nai Lert Park, and in Singapore at Swissotel Merchant Court, private transfers in Bangkok and Singapore and the three-day/two-night train journey that includes a Pullman compartment, all table d'hotel meals on the train and all excursions.

This package involves a 10 per cent reduction exclusive to House of Travel for these departure dates but other dates are available on application.

Further information
Contact House of Travel on 0800 838 747 or visit www.houseoftravel.co.nz/destinations (link below)

* Jim Eagles travelled courtesy of House of Travel, Air New Zealand and Eastern & Oriental Express