A white envelope was waiting at reception when my wife and I checked into Raffles Hotel in Singapore. It was not good news. A freight train had derailed in northern Thailand, trapping the southbound Eastern & Oriental Express until they could clear the damaged wagons. Introduced in 1993 as Asia's answer to Europe's glamorous Venice Simplon Orient Express (and in fact run by the same people), the E & O was now on its way south to Singapore some 24 hours late. At the earliest, tomorrow's northbound train to Bangkok would not leave until late afternoon.
Still, we'd have more time to enjoy Raffles, an oasis of Old World colonial charm and not just a five-star place to stay. "That's where they shot the tiger, hiding beneath the billiard table in 1902," said Mr Danker, the hotel's resident historian, who showed us around. A Singapore Sling at the Long Bar completed our Raffles experience, an affordable indulgence even if you can't afford a room. At least the peanuts are free.
The following afternoon, we presented ourselves at Singapore's classic art deco railway station on Keppel Road. The station's impressive sculptures and murals representing Malayan industry date from 1932, and the façade still proudly sports the initials "FMSR (Federated Malay States Railway).
If you want to catch a train here you'll have to hurry, it's due to close at any moment, a victim of a long-running political wrangle between Malaysia and Singapore. Trains to Malaysia will start at Woodlands, just south of the causeway onto Singapore island some 13 miles north of central Singapore. What might Wilde have said? Something about the cost of everything and the value of nothing. At the station, I spoke to the E & O's general manager, Leesa Lovelace. "Normally, our train runs pretty well," she said. "But about once a year, we have to deal with something like this."For all its luxury and fine dining, the E & O is still subject to the vagaries of the Malaysian and Thai railways over which it runs, and a journey remains something of an adventure.
After a short delay while an incoming intercity from Kuala Lumpur cleared the single track, the brakes hissed off and the E & O Express set out on its 1,250-mile, two-night journey to Bangkok. In the open-air observation car at the rear, a steward kept us topped up with tea and coffee as the train gathered speed along the narrow-gauge track, the railway forming a rural green corridor through urban and suburban Singapore.
After passport control at Woodlands, we crossed the famous causeway which carries the road, railway and much of Singapore's drinking water across the Johor Strait. Now in Malaysia, the train proceeded up the Malay Peninsula, through endless shady palm plantations and patches of thick jungle. Dinner was a classy, four-course affair in one of the two elegant dining-cars. The food was excellent in spite of the cramped kitchens, and many of the male passengers sported dinner jackets, attire made bearable by the air-conditioning.
This is a sociable train, and as table reservations changed with each meal we could meet a cross-section of our fellow travellers. A few were celebrating a birthday or anniversary, most were using the E & O as part of a longer independent tour of south-east Asia, a luxury link between Singapore and Bangkok before an onward hop to Laos or Vietnam.
If we'd been running to time, we could have stretched our legs after dinner during an hour-long halt at Kuala Lumpur's historic railway station, opened in 1910. Dedicated traveller (and part-time insomniac) that I am, I did indeed stroll along the deserted platform, but as I gazed at the Moorish-style towers of Arthur Hubback's beautiful station building, standing proud against the night sky, my watch said 4am.
After a hot shower and leisurely breakfast in our twin-bed stateroom as the train wound its way up through jungle-covered hills, the E & O rolled into Butterworth, the ferry terminal for Georgetown on Penang island, once capital of British Malaya. A pair of road coaches shuttled us across on the ferry and we climbed aboard a fleet of cycle trishaws for a pedal-powered tour of historic Georgetown.
Back at Butterworth, the E & O lost another crucial hour waiting for a train to clear the line ahead. Many passengers had onward arrangements and it was announced that we would make directly for Bangkok next day, dropping the scheduled detour to Kanchanaburi and the bridge on the Kwai. Pre-dinner cocktails were distributed as we neared the Thai border at Padang Besar, and day trips to Kanchanaburi were arranged for those spending time in Bangkok. But I was determined to reach the Kwai by train.
Consoled by another wonderful E & O dinner washed down with a quantity of now-complimentary E&O wine, I spent a second convivial evening in the piano-bar car listening to my wife sing Cole Porter songs accompanied by the ever-cheerful Pete, the E & O's resident Singaporean pianist. The next and third day brought a scenic ride through southern Thailand passing rural villages, hilltop temples and strange rocky outcrops. Finally, late at night and many hours behind schedule, the Eastern & Oriental Express arrived at Bangkok's grand and airy Hualamphong station of 1916, designed by an Italian architect brought from Europe by the Europhile King of Siam.
I was still determined to reach the Kwai, and at 5.30 next morning we were back in a taxi to Hualamphong. Evelyn Kocsis, the E & O's train manager, had phoned ahead, and even though tickets had sold out, she'd made arrangements for us to occupy the seats reserved for train staff on the 6.30am weekend excursion railcar to the Kwai Bridge.
The little third-class train could not have been a greater contrast to the E & O. Perched on leatherette bench seats, we bumped along, stopping at wayside stations, a warm breeze blowing through the open window, turning off the main line at Nong Pladuck onto the undulating weed-strewn branch line to Kanchanaburi.
This was the so-called "Death Railway", built by the Japanese in 1942-43 to link Bangkok with Burma to supply their war effort. From Nong Pladuck to Kanchanaburi, Asian slave labour built the line. From Kanchanaburi onwards Allied prisoners of war built the railway and the bridge across the river near Kanchanaburi made famous by David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Not only does the bridge exist, it still carries three daily passenger trains plus the weekend excursion railcar, although these only go as far as Nam Tok, 130 miles from Bangkok and well short of the Burmese border. However, one thing the bridge doesn't, or didn't, do was cross the Kwai. Pierre Boulle, author of the original book, knew the line followed the Kwai for many miles and assumed it crossed the Kwai near Kanchanaburi.
He was wrong, it crossed the Mae Khlung. With the release of Lean's epic film in 1957, visitors flocked to Thailand seeking a bridge on the River Kwai, but all the Thais could show them was a bridge on the Mae Khlung. So with admirable lateral thinking, they renamed the river. Since 1960, the Mae Khlung has been known as the Kwai Yai or "Big Kwai" for some miles either side of the bridge.
Our little silver railcar stopped briefly at the well-kept country station at Kanchanaburi, 83 miles from Bangkok, then rumbled on for a mile or two behind the town, rounded a sharp left-hand curve hooting wildly and finally expired in the morning sun at River Kwai Bridge station, surrounded by busy souvenir stalls and crowds of Sunday visitors, a hundred yards short of the infamous bridge. We'd made it all from Singapore. Not, perhaps, on the fine Eastern & Oriental Express, but made it none the less, on the Slow Train to the River Kwai.