The best way to see a country? This avid traveller swears by train travel

My name is Clara and I am a train nerd. I’ve taken the train around Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, and, most recently, England and Scotland.

Most people I know don’t “get” train travel. Why would anyone choose to take the train for three days to get from Singapore to Bangkok, when the Thai capital is less than three hours away by plane? And who wants to spend their holidays trying to line up complicated train schedules rather than sit back and relax?

Train rides seem romantic in books and movies. But in reality, they’re a whole lot of nothing. The train is slow. It’s boring. There’s no internet. Sometimes there’s no food. And the one time I took a train with a TV, it was playing the mediocre movie Tomorrowland on loop. I watched it three times over the course of the six-hour ride.

In the age of the one-click-checkout, train travel is anathema to most. But the inefficiency of train travel is exactly why I love it. It forces you to pay attention to the most mundane things.

On my recent trip in England, on a dull-as-dishwater four-hour ride, I listened to a pair of complete strangers having a spontaneous heart-to-heart. It was just like that Richard Linklater movie, Before Sunrise. At the end of the journey, one of the sweet, uncomplaining northerners said to the other: “Hey, the train is only an hour late. That’s not too bad!” And they alighted without exchanging Instagram handles.

Food is always a highlight of any long train journey. On a 20-hour train from Bangkok to Padang Besar, I was fed a hearty Thai spread for dinner: At 6pm, an attendant smartly folded down my seat table and laid out a nine-dish banquet complete with tom yam soup, green and red curry with a choice of protein, salad, fresh fruit, and cake. After a food-induced night’s sleep, I woke up to a similar breakfast as the train chugged towards the Thai-Malaysian border. It was 20 hours of pampering for just under 1,000 baht (S$38).

In other countries, hawkers sell food at the station or on board the trains. I ate vadai (savoury fritters) wrapped in newspaper on a jam-packed train in Colombo, and the railway bentos were among the best meals I’ve eaten in Taiwan. 

But when there’s no food, long train rides can be miserable. There is no hot food on most English and Scottish trains, only a refreshment trolley serving up hot drinks and snacks if you’re lucky. On one full-day train ride, the trolley I longed for did not appear. Starving, I nagged an attendant about it. Labour shortage, he replied with a shrug. So I ate a box of dry Alpen muesli for lunch and dinner. 

It’s not just the food that makes a train ride. The experience of sleeping on board is different, too. 

I’ve had some of the best naps of my life on the cheap (RM42, or about S$12) sleeper train along the eastern coast of Malaysia. What with the constant movement, the train’s whistles, the squalling babies in my compartment, and their young mum watching BTS videos without earphones, this made no sense. 

But it felt very cosy, all this humanity around me. I loved rousing gently awake, looking at junglescapes hurtle by outside the window, and drifting back to sleep.

Although nowhere near as romantic (or cheap) as the trains in Asia, I’ve had an unforgettable experience travelling on British railways with my husband in April and May this year. 

On the surface it seemed like a bit of a gamble. For one thing, it was my longest train trip to date – I spent nearly two months on the road. For another, most people I met made a face upon hearing about our proposed railway journey. “Why not hire a car?” they asked. “That way you can actually get to places worth seeing.” The Brits do not rate their trains very highly, usually opting for cheaper, faster domestic flights instead. 

“And be careful with the strikes,” they warned. Strikes? I hadn’t thought of that. I went to the British National Rail website and learnt there were at least four or five “industrial action” strikes and track closure periods during the trip, requiring a complete itinerary revamp.

Exploring the UK

My favourite train ride in the UK was the famed Settle-Carlisle line. Built during the Victorian railway boom in 1876, it is one of several railways linking England (south) and Scotland (north). 

This slow train is favoured for scenery rather than efficiency. It traverses the Yorkshire Dales, offering quintessentially English country views as we gazed out of the windows: gently rounded hills, burbling streams, fields of daffodils, herds of fat sheep. Think the Shire, where hobbits live in author JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings epic.  

Although the journey takes only a few hours, we decided to stretch it out, stopping to spend several nights along the train line. Life here is slow and restorative. We rambled around the countryside and explored pretty rural villages like Settle and Applebee, completely losing track of time.

Today, luxury trains, complete with fine dining meals on board, chug along the Settle-Carlisle line, while hikers make a beeline for the famous Ribblehead viaduct. But this wasn’t always the case. In the 1970s, the none-too-profitable railway was nearly shuttered by the government. It was saved by a fellowship of rail enthusiasts and local residents just in the nick of time.

The Settle-Carlisle line story makes me wonder if train travel will be the same in the future. While trains are still a common form of public transport in Asia, there are stories about passenger rail operators struggling to stay afloat in the West. 

Maybe this vague threat of extinction makes me appreciate long train rides more. Or maybe I just like an excuse to do nothing.

All images are from Clara Lim.