Nothing quite captures the romanticism of slow travel as does travel by train.
Particularly on a train that looks as if it has arrived from a distant past, complete with Pullman sleeping cars, dining carriages where meals are served with crystal glasses and fine linens, and a separate car with a piano and an elegant bar. Imagine a piano player’s sweet sounds enveloping this room in motion, while you sit on a velvet couch dressed in cocktail attire enjoying a cold martini, staring out the window at the passing landscape of the jungle outside. It seems an image plucked out of a dream— or a movie.
Belmond’s Venice Simplon Orient Express train from London to Venice (and other European cities in between) has forever been on my bucket list for travel. But this year, another experience has been added to that growing list— their newly refurbished, relaunched Eastern & Oriental Express, traveling from Singapore through the rice paddies, rural villages, and lush greenery of Malaysia.
The train service had been suspended since 2020 due to the pandemic, but its much-awaited return this year has brought an added incentive to re-discover this part of the world with glamour and luxury, in the way the Belmond brand does it best…
