Eastern and Oriental Express Part 1 - Thailand

The next part of our holiday was a train ride from Bangkok to Singapore aboard the Eastern & Oriental Express train.  It was totally amazing and I highly encourage anyone who likes train travel to do it.



We left from Hualampong Railway Station around 5pm, and settled into our lovely cabin.

 (that's not me - I borrowed this image from the E&O website)

We had dinner late that night, around 9.15pm, but after consuming some snacks and a bottle of champagne in our cabin we really didn't care.  By the way, the dress code for dinner was formal - men were expected to wear a jacket and tie at least.  I had an assortment of dresses with me so that didn't matter.

The next morning we were woken up by our lovely cabin steward at quarter to dawn so we could see the train cross over the trestle viaduct along the River Kwae.  We arrived in the Observation car when it was still dark and consumed some coffee to wake up.

Here's the sun rising:


Our next stop was the Bridge over the River Kwai itself. Our train stopped on the bridge and we all got off:


And then we went on a raft ride down the river, passing under the bridge:


And down to the museum in Kanchanaburi (sorry, no photos allowed). It was quite fascinating and I had no idea so many people - both prisoners of war and asian workers - died to help the Japanese build this bridge and the Thai-Burma Railway.

We continued our train journey after this stop and crossed over the border into Malaysia early the next morning.