With a hoot, the train stirs gently, and we begin pulling out of Woodlands Station. I’m not on a regular train; this is Belmond’s Eastern & Oriental Express, a bells-and-whistles luxury sleeper, which winds its way up from Singapore and crosses over into Malaysia, slipping through dense jungle and out into the wilderness.
The train runs different routes depending on the season, and I’m on the ‘Wild Malaysia’ journey: a three-night adventure that snakes through Taman Negara national park, runs over to the untamed west coast, and stops in Penang before looping back to Singapore on its final morning. Earlier that day, we’d been whisked from our hotel directly to the station, where a flurry of suited-up valets swept up our luggage and ushered us through a private, express check-in reserved exclusively for Belmond guests.
