Scenic Route

Kissa Castañeda

hree days, two nights and 51 hours on a train. It may sound long in the beginning but time flies when you’re aboard the Belmond Eastern & Oriental Express, a luxury sleeper train that travels through Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand with itineraries ranging from two to six nights. Sleeper trains were once like the Airbus A380, a modern marvel of transportation and a feat of engineering. Today, it trades on nostalgia and the promise of a journey that’s a destination in itself. The mere mention of the name takes one back to the golden age of travel when exploring the world was an exercise in elegance. It is a bucket-list trip so iconic I could picture it clearly in my mind—from the warm wood that clad the cabin interiors down to the thick textiles that swathe the furnishings and the floors. The trip began with check-in at Raffles Hotel Singapore, probably the only one in the world that comes with a Singapore Sling, a cocktail squarely in tourist territory and a signal that I was to embark on a quintessential train journey. Upon arriving at Woodlands Station, I felt slightly star-struck upon seeing the train for the first time. It was like meeting a movie star in real life, Sean Connery perhaps, and a Rolodex of images flashed in my mind as I matched imagination with reality. I looked for Carriage G, which happened to be one of the two carriages whose facade was transformed by Singapore-based street artist Rajesh Kumar as part of Belmond’s art initiative early this year. I was then ushered by the attendant into a Pullman Cabin that looked exactly how I thought it would be—worldly in design, intimate in feel and characterised by a gorgeous patina.