Copenhagen to Finland, via Stockholm A fascinating bridge links Denmark and Sweden across the Øresund Sound, it vanishes under the water as a tunnel only to reappear on a spit of land half way across to sweep over the final half to Sweden. The Øresund Bridge turns into...
By train to Copenhagen The lure to head to north was too much, Scandinavia called me. So there I was, stood on platform 5b at Hamburg station waiting for the InterCity Express 33 to transport me to Copenhagen. My time in Hamburg had been brief, I’d...
Bruges in the Rain, Belgium. Board the Eurostar at St Pancras, London and in less than four hours you can be wandering the picture-perfect streets of Bruges. It’s a simple platform change at Brussels: a smooth, roomy Belgian train will transport you for the last hour across the...
Perhentian Islands, Malaysia White sand beaches, crystal clear azure water and very low-key development, it sure sounds like paradise, right? The Perhentians are two small islands off the north-eastern coast of Peninsula Malaysia; they had been on our radar since our last trip to Malaysia:...
The Bangkok to Butterworth Train: The International Express from Thailand to Malaysia. Penang: it is one of my favourite places on earth. This small island in the north-western coast of peninsula Malaysia is a melting pot of culture; feed your eyes, your belly and your...
It was time to catch the train again! We had three days before our flight back to Bangkok; having opted to fly out of Mandalay, we now had to get there. Our arrival into Naungshwe (for Lake Inle) had been by bus over the mountains,...
Two months of travel in China drew to a close, it was time to move on, with a few days left on our visas we departed Yangshuo on the bus to Guilin, a journey we had made a few times since basing ourselves in the...
After our little break in Hong Kong we headed back to mainland China just before christmas. Our destination was Yangshuo, we took a train from Hung Hom to Guangzhou East which was a pleasant, smooth ride complete with Hong Kong egg tarts and a cup...
The Leshan Grand Buddha is the largest carved stone Buddha in the world. He was carved from a cliff overlooking a wide confluence of rivers 1200 years ago and gazes out with a calm expression on his face. Yet not all of the Leshan Buddha...
Ulaanbaatar After our little adventure around the wide open spaces of the Gobi desert it felt strange to be confined in chaotic, noisy Ulaanbaatar. In the two full days left in Mongolia we saw an excellent cultural show, with traditional throat singing, I had and...
We certainly arrived in Ulaanbaatar on an auspicious day. At 5am, all bleary-eyed, we stepped off the train from Russia in to the shivering darkness of a Mongolian morning and were informed it was a national holiday. It was Chinggis Khan’s birthday. The train, number...
Crossing Siberia by Train The pleasure of standing in the corridor of a sleeper carriage watching the world pass by the window is one of the reasons I adore long distance train travel, being rocked to sleep by the rails, I could rhapsodize forever. For...
We were finally on our way to Russia, on the Vilnius to St Petersburg sleeper train. I had booked the tickets though the agency we had arranged our visas with, Real Russia, so it was no surprise to find that the other two passengers in...
On the Jan Kiepura Sleeper Train from Cologne to Warsaw, I had just drifted off in our cabin when there was a knock on the door. The train had pulled into a station somewhere in deepest Germany and we were joined by another passenger. After this...
On Thursday 10th October we departed London St Pancras on the Eurostar bound for Brussels. The aim of this adventure is to travel from the UK to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam entirely by train. This was our first leg, heading to Poland. We...
Now the adventure really began, we had arrived in Syria…… So I’ll pick up where I left off: Travelling from Istanbul to Aleppo on the Toros Express Train. We had crossed the Turkey/Syria border with no problem. We hadn’t even had to leave the train,...
