The real reason for this trip to Asia was to travel on the Eastern & Oriental Express, the side trips to Indonesia and Bangkok ahead of boarding the train, provided a good filler and of course we visited a new country. The E&O Express was due to depart Bangkok Hua Lamphong station at 17.50 on the Saturday afternoon and travel 1,246 miles to Singapore (Woodlands Checkpoint) via Kanchanaburi (for the River Kwai), and Malaysia for a stop at Kuala Kangsar,...

Flying from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore takes about one hour and there are around thirty flights a day but by train the journey is a heck of a lot longer, a tad more complicated and kind of three trains a day. From KL Sentral station to JB Sentral station it was an eight hour journey, upon arrival at JB (that is Johor Bahru in southern Malaysia) we had to buy another ticket to get across the causeway to the Singapore Woodlands Checkpoint which was just a five minut...

After the seven hour overnight flight from from London to Muscat (Sunday into Monday) we had a quick dash through the airport to catch the onward flight to Kuala Lumpur (another six and a half hours) which saw us touch down at 8pm on Monday evening at KL International Airport. After a night at a hotel at the airport, where we met up with friends John & Rita who had arrived from Dubai, we headed into Kuala Lumpur on the KLIA Express - a thirty minute trip by train...