It's local trains from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur . They say it's a experience for a reasonable sum of money . Well that would be great if the tickets had turned up in Bangkok as promised so as they say in the movies we will go back in time .

On arriving in Bangkok we asked for the tickets at the hotel and were told , what tickets . A phone call to the UK and the local agent apportioned blame to the hotel who looked to the sky's and in the store room and came up with nothing from both . So off the hotel went to the railway authorities , police and anyone else who could resolve things. Cut a long story short we got a document written in Thai from both the rail and police saying we could travel .

Now here we are on the train expecting a ticket collector to send us packing . Guess what he accepted a photocopy of the ticket and all the documents we had acquired went to waste .

Still carriage 2 seats 9 & 10 were ours . Flag planted and a sturdy British approach to occupation ensued. Supper ordered with a firm believe we would spend the evening in the toilet which afforded a fine view of the railway tracks beneath. Surprise surprise supper at £3 was taste and reasonable in fact some one said if only their brother could make a decent curry like this all would be well.

The train journey itself was slow the train barely making 60 kph with a Honda 50 and tricks laden with steel easily overtaking . This might of had something to do with a 1950 engine ( singular ) and about 40 carriages , those with a physics background might understand .

The company was all local except a German who had done the journey 30 times and provided a travel book update . In fact he wrote travel books luckily in German .

Still at 8.00pm everyone bedded down and pulled the curtain to keep out the noise . Effective if it weren't for the carriages creaking and moaning all night long, it could have been her indoors however you never know. Still end result 3 hours sleep.

An good £2 breakfast later we arrived into butterworth at 13.30 hours . Our next train was at 22.30 hrs so we planned to drop the cases and visit Georgetown via the local ferry . Unfortunately butterworth does not deal in left luggage and ended up pulling our 20kgs to the ferry and thereafter to the free bus around the UNESCO town. Now there are some UNESCO sites that are great and those which are clearly Beazer home league this was the latter , so we retired to a local Indian restaurant.

Given we saw a storm approaching we took the ferry back ( didn't want to be stranded) and took residence at the station at 18.00 hrs , yes I know 4 hrs plus before departure. However by this time a minor tropical storm had hit us so we were happy on a bench with books.

Train arrived on time and we immediately got to bed for our 6 hours sleep . All went well and we arrived into KL on time with one us sporting a migraine. Now as travel experiences go this is not ideal still we obtained monorail tickets and a plastic bag for you know what and proceeded to our hotel arriving at 8.30 am and in British tradition demanding a room which was respectfully refused. So we went a quick walk and as soon as the sign Starbucks was seen the migraine got better ( this breakthrough has been patented ).

By 11.00 am we were in the room and using half of the KL water supply to freshen up.

We have now finished traveling with the locals , bring on the luxury .