On board the most luxurious train journey Asia has to offer
I took the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express three times last year. As a passenger, not as a pot-scrubber or a stowaway. I cannot imagine what good deeds I must have done in a previous life to merit such spoiling. By the end of the third trip, I had concluded that the entire VSOE operation was all but unimprovable. Crisp as new banknotes. No faults worth mentioning, nothing missing.
However, having just got back from a trip between Singapore and Penang on the rebooted Eastern & Oriental Express – another gorgeously tricked-out time-machine of a train, operated by the same people, Belmond, as the VSOE – I find myself wondering whether I need to revise my earlier perception slightly. If the VSOE is missing something, it is the possibility, remote but real, which does exist while you are on the E&O, of spotting a Malayan tiger lurking watchfully in the leafy embankment beside the tracks.
Despite its old-fashioned appearance – approximately Victorian with Art Deco elements; dark green and cream with polished brass lettering and a rampant-tiger motif on the outside; gleaming cherrywood panelling and silky, velvety, jewel-toned fabrics on the inside – the E&O is not an old train. It was launched in 1993. The service was suspended in 2020 and resumed in 2024, the rolling stock having been refreshed and tweaked in the meantime. Two new seasonal, three-night itineraries through Malaysia have been introduced and a new Culinary Curator has been appointed, the Taiwanese superstar André Chiang, who came to global prominence at the three-Michelin-starred Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier.
On this particular outing, the sybaritic stakes were even higher than usual. It was a special Solaire Journey organised and hosted by Veuve Clicquot, the first in a series of three such journeys that will take place in 2024 on Belmond trains in different continents (details below).
Minutes out of Singapore’s Woodlands station, we had crossed the causeway and entered Malaysia. I joined half a dozen passengers in the open-air observation car. Rain drummed on the roof. A warm breeze blew the rain in a little, causing the group to cluster in the middle of the carriage. The corridor of palms through which we passed glistened darkly. “Well,” someone quipped. “It really is a jungle out there.”
From start to finish the journey flowed as easily as the champagne (Veuve Clicquot, naturally). Not exactly smoothly, since there was constant swaying, tilting, jolting, squeaking and clanging as the train made its unhurried way along tracks that had been laid more than a century ago. Far from being bothersome, these unavoidable disruptions soon came to seem as soothing and reassuring as the sound of corks popping.
I was surprised by the diversity of the crowd. High rollers, loved-up couples, trip-of-a-lifetime types, foodies, train nuts. Champagne nuts, too, of course, on this trip. A broad spread of nationalities and ages. Two amusing young women from Los Angeles, one of whom wore head-to-toe Chanel, all day, every day, including, at dinner on our first night, a feathered headdress that might have caused the rhinoceros hornbills and blue-throated bee-eaters beyond our windows to stare in open-beaked wonder.
The dinners were magnificent occasions, worth dressing up for. André Chiang explained that he intended to take us on a journey from Asia to Europe and back, navigating by means of spices; Veuve Clicquot’s cellar master, Didier Mariotti, promised to complement that journey with a parallel adventure of his own into the history of the maison as expressed through a selection of its vintages.
We stopped for excursions on days two and three, the first in Taman Negara National Park, in the middle of the country, the second in George Town, on Penang, off the west coast in the Straits of Malacca. I had distant memories of George Town from a childhood visit more than 40 years ago but was struck by the intensity of its swirl and bustle. This impression was enhanced by the fact that I saw much of it from the back of a Vespa, riding pillion behind a local guide who, between pauses to inspect works of street art, a temple that hosted a traditional puppet theatre and other sites of interest, chatted excitedly about her dinner plans. “Whatever you do,” she said, “do not leave Malaysia without having a curry.” Her advice took on an air of prophecy when, back on the train that same evening, André Chiang delivered a sensational Penang duck curry with Muscat grapes and pineapple, paired with a luscious Veuve Clicquot Cave Privée Rosé 1989.
But it is the national park that lingers most vividly in my memory. Taman Negara is a place of extraordinary beauty and a verticality more dizzying than anything you might experience among the forest of steel and glass in Kuala Lumpur. Thanks to an agreement Belmond had reached with the local authorities, we had the park to ourselves for a couple of hours before its official opening time. And thanks to our guide, a locally born biologist, aspects of the conservation challenges modern Malaysia is facing were brought compellingly into focus. The conversation touched on the plight of the critically endangered Malayan tiger, of which, by some estimates, there may be fewer than 50 still in existence in the wild. About the same number of tigers in the entire country as there were passengers aboard the E&O.
It is a peculiarity of these Belmond train journeys that, although in theory you have plenty of time to do nothing at all, the days and nights fill up without any deliberate effort on your part and rattle by with never a dull moment. Magic tricks were performed in the Piano Bar along with Nanyang jazz and hypnotic traditional Malayan music for the sape and gambus. I promised myself I would find someone to teach me mahjong but in the end the closest I got to a board game was preventing a fellow passenger from swallowing a Go pebble that she had scooped up from a bowl brimming with them, mistaking them for sweeties. I suppose it would be possible to keep yourself to yourself if you wished to do so – cabins in all three categories, Pullman, State and Presidential, are extremely comfortable, and even the smallest have their own bathrooms. But a journey by train, or a train such as the E&O at least, is a fundamentally social affair, a catalyst for conviviality and an antidote to jadedness.
A word of advice regarding the end of the journey. You are unlikely to want the embroidered-dragons-and tasselled-lampshade fantasy to hit the buffers at the same moment as the train. I strongly recommend a night or two at Raffles in Singapore after disembarking, to ease the re-entry process. Surely lovelier today than at any point in its long history, it will provide the softest of soft landings.
The Eastern & Oriental Express, A Belmond Train, Southeast Asia offers two three-night itineraries, “Essence of Malaysia” (from November to February) and “Wild Malaysia” (from March to October, except June), from USD3,750 (£2,992) per person. For booking and more information, visit belmond.com. Raffles Singapore (00 65 6337 1886; raffles.com) has rooms from SGD 2,000 (£1,180) per night.
Champagne railing: the Solaire Journeys
The yellow Veuve Clicquot label, the famous carte jaune, is among the most recognisable of all champagne-brand liveries and an irresistibly cheering sight. Its upbeat associations of sunshine, growth and the rhythms of nature provide a convenient link with the maison’s Solaire Journeys concept, developed in partnership with Belmond. Further to the inaugural Solaire Journey through Malaysia on the Eastern & Oriental Express in April, two further trips will follow in 2024, also on Belmond trains: from Vienna to Reims on the Venice Simplon Orient Express in July, and from Cusco to Arequipa and Machu Picchu on the Hiram Bingham and Andean Explorer in October. (Note the east-to-west sequence of the journeys – a typically thoughtful touch in keeping with the solar theme.)
These Solaire Journeys provide a unique opportunity for champagne lovers to enjoy rare and exceptional Veuve Clicquot vintages in the company of cellar master Didier Mariotti, in settings and against backdrops of an equally rare and exceptional nature. “There is no doubt that our environment and surroundings affect our experience of champagne,” he told me during our recent trip on the E&O Express. “Colours, sounds, temperature, light, atmosphere, mood – they all play a part.” Over breakfast, lunch and dinner on these Solaire Journeys, and during organised tasting sessions in between, serious oenophiles can contemplate the impact of such factors on the aroma, flavour and texture of the array of Veuve Clicquot champagnes on offer, and compare notes, in person, with the man who knows more than any other about them. The rest of us can simply sit back, raise a glass and drink in the views.
The next Veuve Clicquot Solaire Journeys are from Vienna to Reims on the Venice Simplon Orient Express (from £6,900 per person, July 4-6 2024), and from Cusco to Arequipa and Machu Picchu on the Hiram Bingham and Andean Explorer (from £11,970 per person, October 21-26 2024). For bookings and more information, visit belmond.com and veuveclicquot.com.
