BootsnAll Travel Network



Modes of travel part 1 Planes & trains

Have traveled on numerous variations of the usual planes, trains, buses & automobiles, horse drawn carriages, ships, ferries & other sorts of watercraft. To the not so usual hot air balloons, double decker buses, London black cabs, elephants, camels & dugouts.

When it comes to planes Greenland Air’s Airbus on the route from Greenland to Copenhagen is the economy class hands down winner, by a country mile over any airline I have flown. They haven’t heard of “cattle car” seating which is prevalent on most others. The food, which would put some restaurants to shame, is impressive, also an economy class winner in the industry with top notch service.

Their Dash 7’s on the local short hauls are also good with excellent flight crews. The only draw back is they’re a tad expensive but one normally gets what they pay for when it comes to airlines. The notable exceptions being Qantas & Air Canada both of which are on my, NO fly, avoid like the plague list.

JAL which still uses all female stewardesses instead of the other “politically correct” airlines with their mixed crew of “flight attendants” (at least on the NRT-DEL run) seems a touch above the other carriers I have flown this trip with AA, BA & LAN being in the middle rank with a tad more leg room, competent, courteous flight crews, airport check in & flight centre personnel. Then comes Cebu Pacific, Air China, Air Asia & Thai air who have good personal but whose seating falls into the “cattle car” class.

Finally down at the bottom you have Qantas whose SIN-PER flight was tolerable but the best thing that can be said about their “cattle car” affiliates, including Jetstar (who refused to check my bag through) is that by some miracle the planes didn’t fall out of the sky!

Could write a book about my train travels during the past 10 months but shall just give a quick overview here. As anyone following this blog knows, I have travelled by train in England from Newcastle to Birmingham, EXPENSIVE, then a cheap (tad under 20 GBP) from Birmingham to London & return, both trips fine.

I then traveled from Oslo to Vladivostok (except for a few miles on the Sweden/Finland border where there is no train but your ticket covers the bus), via St Petersburg (awesome city) & Moscow (hmmm) with a jog down to Ulan-Bator (wish I’d had 3 weeks instead of 3 days). An absolutely fantastic trip, I highly recommend, in full or any part.

Next was Lhasa to Beijing, a 2 day jaunt from the highest station in the world to a not so nice, heavily polluted city with very few redeeming features, on a train using sleeper cars, built by the Canadian firm Bombardier. The worst designed that I have traveled in but don’t if the Canadians or Chinese were responsible for that blunder, which took away from an otherwise fine experience.

Trip from Hue to HCMC (Saigon) full day + night in a coach seat was nice as was the day trip on “Railcar” from Bangkok to Chaing-Mai, also the hop from Bangkok to Surat Thani. All good trips, interesting with no problems & coach seat with the exception of the 2nd class non A/C sleeper from Bangkok to Surat Thani.

More interesting was the day time run from Yangon to Mandalay followed by the amazing hop, in the mountains, from Hspaw to Pyin U Lwin in Myanmar. The “Jungle Line” from Gemas to Kota Bharu Malaysia is also pretty cool, although not the “incredible” trip Lonely Planet makes it out to be. Also when they sell you the ticket in KL & tell you the train from Gemas doesn’t go all the way to Kota Bharu but you have to change, do NOT believe them as it merely stops for 20 min about 1/2 way, changes numbers, then carries on. Guess nobody told the KL ticket sellers that!

Now for the fun part. To get to Thailand by train from Kota Bharu Malaysia it is necessary to take a taxi to the border crossing at Sungai Kolok then a motorcycle taxi to the station. Of course if you had believed Lonely Planet or the Canadian governments web site you never would have taken the trip anyway as you would have been afraid of tripping over all the heads rolling down the street. Fortunately there is a voice of reason from “the man in seat 61” website that puts the problem in perspective, if you stay around long enough you might possibly see some violence but to just pass through it’s extremely unlikely. However it was interesting traveling on a train patrolled by soldiers in body armor & passing stations with sandbag bunkers.

At Hat Yai the soldiers faded away. Now I had spent the night in Hat Yai a week previously, not knowing how (supposedly) dangerous (at least according to our illustrious Canadian government), as the multitude of Chinese tourists there for the Chinese New Years holiday sure weren’t concerned & it actually seemed safer to me than south Oshawa in the evening. Oh well what do myself + a few thousand Chinese that were there know, compared to the Canadian simple serpent, that has likely never ventured away from his home province, that wrote the advisory?? Bottom line was that after an enjoyable, overnight train ride in coach (no sleepers when I checked in but 2 min before we left one became available for an extra 400 Baht, NO way Jose am I paying 400 Baht for a 2nd class sleeper berth), especially when coach was only 600 Baht, I arrived in Bangkok without incident!

Another fabulous train trip is the, 3rd class only trip from Bangkok’s Thonburri Station to Kanchanaburi, the home of The Bridge over the River Kwai. A 3 hr ride for a measly 100 Baht. If you go on to Namtok you actually cross the bridge, if not you can take a tourist train for 20 Baht on a 20 min ride across +  a couple miles down the line. Have been there 3 times & done it both ways on both trains + walked across. If you should find yourself in the area make sure to stop in at “The Red Neck” bar, on the tourist strip by the river & say Hi to Jimmy & the boys. Should really spend a night in Namtok but I didn’t know that at the time & had to get back to Bangkok. Oh yeah make sure to visit the Hell Fire Pass museum & monument, which was erected by the Australian government, on the old railway line in the area. Can also reach Hell Fire Pass via local bus  from town. Also there is a very good museum on the “Death Railway” in Kanchanaburi, right across from the war memorial cemetery.

Only one line in Borneo & it was closed for repairs when I was there. However traveled from Jakarta, where you can see locals with no money who can ride on the roof of the electric trains for free, free but scary, to Banyuwangi (Manyar  hotel good + cheap near ferry docks) & the ferry to Bali. It’s a 2 day trip with an overnight stop & train change in Surabaya. You also get an idea of just how poor the country is when you see the rice farmers harvesting the crop with sickles & threshing it by hand, hadn’t seen that since Myanmar. That said the railway & equipment are in good shape & had no problems other than the schedule is just there for looks & trains arrive when they arrive, no big deal for a traveler, don’t think locals pay much attention to the clock either. The second leg through the coastal hills was cool.

Took the Qantas (YECH) bird from Singapore to OZ & a cross continent (Island depending on who you listen to) on the Indian Pacific + north from Adelaide on the legendary (overrated) Ghan to Alice Springs, red seats full for the leg to Darwin & finally the Overland, Adelaide to Melbourne (where I had dealings with the Qantas rep from HELL!!

Bought a backpacker rail pass for the Great Southern network which was a great deal for coach seats but sleepers were out of the question at $300/night DUH talk about rip-off!!

Biggest scam I heard was the $3,000.00 cost of a platinum ticket on the Ghan for the 2 day trip from Adelaide to Darwin! That’s more than The Orient  Express charges for the 2 days from Singapore to Bangkok. Sorry OZ but the Ghan isn’t in the same league as The Orient Express, not by a country mile.

Trains were OK, service not bad but comes with a simple serpent attitude of not really caring, all in all not impressive. Glad I took the trips but they don’t measure up to 3rd world/emerging nation, standards!

New Zealand was another matter with my experience on the Overlander being bad from the get-go, when you had to wrestle your luggage down 2 escalators then walk the length of the platform to check it. NOT an impressive start to a trip fraught with problems brought on by poor maintenance. That said the train crew was great. Once on the south island the train performance was good & the crews still great, scenery was also much better.

The worst, by far, trip was on Euro rail from Copenhagen to Amsterdam! There was a night sleeper on the run but what’s the point of a train journey in a new country in the dark? So chose to do it during the day which meant 6 train changes with NO luggage check, have to keep it with you which really adds to the fun when there are no seats, chicken bus Euro style. Absolutely ridiculous in supposed  first world countries!

Have also traveled from Montreal to Edmonton, many snows ago when the line was still operated by CN & done a couple short jaunts on Amtrak in the US.

Some trips were more scenic, others like the Trans-Siberian were real eye openers into the countries visited & showed how we have been misled by our governments & media about how things really are. Never in my wildest dreams would have thought Siberia would be home to major cities & enormous tracts of farm land or  the entire 7 day trip would be on a dual track, electrified line or that Indonesia would be utilizing such antiquated farming practices.

With the exception of the day from hell on Euro rail, all were enjoyable, enlightening & well worth the money. Hard to pick a best but the run from Hspaw to Pyin U Lwin through the mountains of Myanmar tops my list!

Still to come is a rail trip from Anchorage to Fairbanks in Alaska.



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4 responses to “Modes of travel part 1 Planes & trains”

  1. topturner says:

    The thing to remember when travelling by train in the UK is to book in advance. Just returned from a weekend in Edinburgh, a 600+ mile round trip for £33, excellent value. Here’s the website i booked with.
    http://www.thetrainline.com/farefinder/Default.aspx

  2. Dave says:

    Gracias shall remember that for when I return!

  3. Oz says:

    Sorry your Oz leg was not as you hoped.
    Thing to remember here is that Singapore to Bangkok is approx 880mi and Adelaide to Darwin is over 1,880mi – so of course there’s going to be a price difference!!! Particularly if you wish to travel Platinum (First Class)

  4. Dave says:

    2 days is still 2 days so it only figures out to around $62.50/hr.

    Also The Orient Express has no Red class cars full of common people & backpackers or does it haul around a bunch of peoples motor vehicles. It’s truly a first class train, going to & from Bangkok, recently voted the best city in the world by one of the travel magazines.