The Eastern and Oriental: Great Train Journeys Route The train leaves from Singapore's Woodlands station, a world away from the bustle of Changi airport where most tourists from abroad arrive. Smartly uniformed attendants guide passengers to their small but beautifully formed compartments. Once the train has crossed the Johor Causeway linking Singapore with Malaysia, the gastronomic indulgences can begin. Life's pleasures don't get much better than enjoying good food, wine and conversation while pleasing landscapes glide past the window. White-flowered coffee trees and the pendulous pods of cocoa trees will be novel sights to most European passengers, rather more attractive than the ranks of rubber trees in plantations beside the railway. Villages of stilted houses reached by ladder and surrounded by vegetable gardens, date palms and banana trees break up the commercial forests. As the sun sets, heralding pre-prandial drinks, the train pauses at Kuala Lumpur's great white station building, completed in 1910 and combining elements of Moorish, Mogul and Saracenic architecture. The lights of the twin Petronas Towers (rising to 1,483ft) stand out over the impressive skyline of Malaysia's capital, threaded by the elevated tracks of its excellent Light Rail System. The twin Petronas Towers stand out over Kuala Lumpur's skyline The open veranda of the observation car is perhaps best enjoyed around dawn when the temperature is cooler and one can watch the mist rising from the forest. After breakfast and arrival at Butterworth, named after an early Straits Settlement governor, comes the first excursion, across the water to the island of Penang and a guided tour of George Town. This colonial settlement is now Malaysia's second-largest city, and part of its historic commercial centre was listed as a World Heritage site in 2008. The tour takes in mosques, ornately roofed temples, churches and bazaars created in what was one of the first British trading centres in the East. George Town's best-known hotel is the E&O (established in 1885), from which the train takes its name, where guests have included Noël Coward, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham. On rejoining the train for lunch, you look out on a changed landscape: there are still thatched houses on stilts, but vivid green rice paddies have replaced the forest. Straw-hatted farm workers steer water buffalos through the paddies. Blink and you might miss the rapid costume change of the bar hostesses, who reappear in Thai costumes and serve Thailand's Singha Gold beer instead of Singapore's Tiger brew. Outside, mosques give way to temples with tiered roofs, decorative bargeboards and finials sculpted into serpentine shapes. After breakfast on the third day the E&O arrives at the River Kwai Bridge station, starting point for the final excursion. Guides escort you on the short walk down to the jetty to board a local craft for a cruise along the lush greenery of the picturesque Kwai Yai river, passing under the Bridge (see Highlight below). The E&O at the River Kwai Bridge station You rejoin the train at Kanchanaburi railway station, eating lunch while looking out over the hinterland of Bangkok. As the city draws closer, the press of urban life on the railway itself becomes almost alarming: the tracks cut a narrow swathe through shanty towns and street markets, where hawkers sometimes set up their stalls right beside the line. After the quiet of Woodland station and the serenity of the train itself, the crush and clamour of Bangkok's Hualamphong station can come as something of a shock. The southbound train includes the same visit to the River Kwai bridge and a brief tour of George Town. The visit to the Kwai River bridge is for many passengers the most memorable part of the journey. From River Kwai Bridge station, you are escorted to waiting boats for a cruise between the lush banks of the Kwai Yai river, passing under the famous bridge. It is not the original bridge, which was destroyed by Allied bombing, and it looks nothing like the wooden one in the film, which was shot in Sri Lanka. The 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai and the novel on which it was based should really have been titled The Bridge on the River Mae Khlung. The book's author got the name wrong. When people who had seen the film started to come looking for the bridge, the local authorities renamed the river the Kwai Yai (meaning "Big Kwai"). E&O passengers are accompanied by a local historian who describes the history of the Thailand-Burma railway and the bridge. The visit takes in the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre and the Don Rak War Cemetery at Kanchanaburi, where 6,982 former prisoners of war are buried, mostly Australian, British and Dutch. Passengers can go on a cruise between the banks of the Kwai Yai river The E&O has a UK booking office (0845 077 2222; orient-express.com). Companies offering a trip on the train as part of a longer South-East Asia package include Cox & Kings (0845 004 2493; coxandkings.co.uk) and Hayes & Jarvis (0844 855 4488; hayesandjarvis.co.uk). The E&O runs between one and three times a month throughout the year, with passengers spending two nights on the train northbound and three nights southbound. The northbound train leaves Singapore at 12.15 and arrives in Bangkok at 16.45; the southbound departure leaves Bangkok at 17.50 and arrives in Singapore at 11.05. The train runs over an almost entirely single-track line, so there have been rare occasions when a problem with another train has caused an excursion to be omitted. Tight connections at the destination are unwise. Prices for 2013 start at £1,560 per person for the journey between Singapore and Bangkok, based on double occupancy in a Pullman cabin. The "Chronicles of South-East Asia" journeys cost from £2,500 per person for three nights and £5,700 per person for six. Both include sightseeing tours, table d'hôte meals and most drinks. Compartments ("cabins" on the E&O), their walls decorated with veneers of wooden marquetry in Eastern designs, each have a private en suite shower, washbasin and WC. Pullman Cabins measure 5.7 square metres (62 square feet) and form a private lounge by day with a banquette-style sofa that converts into an upper and lower bed. State Cabins measure 7.8 square metres (84 square feet), with the same arrangement as Pullman, plus a fixed chair and one movable chair. Fixed daytime seating converts to two single beds at night. Presidential Cabins are similar but measure 11.6 square metres (125 square feet) and have two movable chairs and a complimentary bar. The bar and restaurant cars are decorated in Chinese and Thai lacquer using Malaysian motifs, and the former has a pianist and evening entertainment. The observation car, at the very end of the train, is a popular spot for cocktails. One third of it is an outdoor observation area: the perfect place to take photographs or simply drink in the sounds and scents of South-East Asia. The dining car serves gourmet-standard cuisine, subtly blending local and Western ideas. For brunch, expect dishes such as warm goat's cheese soufflé with a fricassee of asparagus in a delicate Thai curry bouillon; for dinner, medallions of beef with fricassee of crisply cooked vegetables. Luggage for Pullman and State compartment passengers is limited to 30kg, and the limited storage space makes a smaller case for the train advisable. Cotton or linen clothes will be needed for Penang and the River Kwai, men should have a light jacket and tie for dinner, and some passengers might want a pullover or wrap in case the air-conditioning proves too fierce. Perhaps the best single-volume guide with plenty of history is the South East Asian Guide (Footprint). For a passage on pre-E&O train travel in the region, try Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar. Siamese White, by Maurice Collis, tells the remarkable story of one Samuel White of Bath, who became a mandarin of Siam. There's no shortage of novels set in the region traversed by the train: in Singapore, River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, King Rat by James Clavell; in Malaya/Malaysia, The Consul's File by Paul Theroux, My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey, The White Pearl by Kate Furnivall, A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute, The Malayan Trilogy by Anthony Burgess, and almost anything by Somerset Maugham; in Thailand, The Beach by Alex Garland (made into a film by Danny Boyle). CDs: The Rough Guide to the Music of Malaysia; Virtuosi of Thai Classical Music. Orient-Express's website (www.orient-express.com) has a video.