Can there be a four-word phrase in the English language which causes the heart to sink more quickly than 'rail replacement bus service'? I suppose when the dreaded announcement happens somewhere just outside East Croydon it lacks the exotic qualities of Malaysia, but the impact is broadly the same - delay and confusion. I'm two thirds into a train journey from Singapore to Bangkok, and so far it's not been the travel 'event' I hoped it would be. The first leg - to Kuala Lumpur - transferred to a bus because of a derailed goods train further up the line (this photo shows the scene at Gemas station where we all had to get off), and the second leg - to Penang - was delayed by two and a half hours. I wonder what the overnight bunk to Bangkok will bring?!
I'm trying to take a step back before I'm too critical of the service, because it's easy to lash out at a train company when delays occur...as any Brit knows only too well. But in advance I'd been seeing this part of the trip as an experience not unlike the Indian-Pacific between Adelaide and Sydney, and in truth it's not. Despite the information on that most wonderful of websites, (seat61), it's a long journey on a slightly tired looking train with only limited facilities.
The plus points are the comfort of the seats, the amount of legroom and the genial staff. Hats off to the woman at the immigration counter when I crossed from Singapore into Malaysia who ended our brief encounter with a smile and the words 'Welcome to Malaysia'. When so many countries around the world seem to go out of their way to make the passport checking process as disagreeable as possible it's heartening to find one that takes the opposite point of view.
But on the downside the train carriages look jaded and the windows often aren't clean enough to enjoy the views. There is a TV screen, but in the first train it didn't work, in the second train (after the bus) a trailer for a film got stuck and just kept replaying until an irate German got up and turned the whole thing off, and in the third train a documentary about bees was strangely interruped by a song from Ronan Keating. The food in the buffet car I visited wasn't refrigerated, so the cheese sandwich I had was somewhere between stale and brittle. And when nature calls there's a squat-style toilet which has a handy guide to squatting on the wall. Face forwards not back.
OK, enough moaning. This is Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur, a city I saw only fleetingly but which I took to immediately. Having tried to do Montevideo in eight hours, I atttempted KL in four so the surface was barely scratched. But the hotch-potch of architectural styles, the vitality of Central Market and Chinatown and the awesome but slightly ridiculous Petronas Towers make for a really appealing mix. Those towers remain the tallest twin buildings in the world, and if they didn't feature in an episode of 'Thunderbirds' when Scott, Virgil and others performed miracles with an unlikely array of rescue equipment then they surely should have done.
