1st Class??

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So, there apparently was a first class lounge at Kuala Lumpur train station. After we dragged our sorry arses upstairs to find it, we happened upon a dark, hot, empty room which seemed not to have had any occupants in it since 2006. This ddn't bode well for the journey but at this point we were still too stupidly naive and full of excitement at the thought of leaving KL and spending the night on a first class sleeper. If we'd chanced to look past our reveries on having dinner in the fabulous dining car or a cheeky vodka cocktail whilst watching the jungle fly past gracefully, we might have just clicked that all was not as it should be. All I will say is that I can now see why people get murdered on trains... Ed, please continue!

Took the sleeper train to Wakaf Bharu (via Stalinist Russia), 1st Class...allegedly... Lesson No.1 for travelling around Asia - Nothing at all is what it seems, or should be, or works as originally intended. If it's not entirely broken it's going be a pale imitation of the real thing and has picked up some annoying additional "features" over time. This is entirely true of the Jungle Line. It was dirty and broken and the noisiest and roughest train ride of my life and somehow I had expected to sleep. Foolish, foolish me. 13 hrs of hell but we survived. If only that had been the worst of it....

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