Riding the jungle train

We boarded the jungle train in Kuala Lipis, a mountain town in central Malaysia and the friendliest place we have ever been. Giggling children, smiling adults and people zooming past on motorbikes would shout out 'hello' and 'how are you?' to us, sometimes stopping for a chat. It's a small town, but its colourful buildings and lovely people made it one of my favourite stops in Malaysia.

We also managed to catch the town's Ramadan market. Each town in Malaysia has a market that's open 4–7pm every day during the fasting month for people to buy takeaway food to take home for their dinner. This one had a lot of delicious desserts and colourful drinks.

Anyway, on to the train! The train cost just over 10 RM (£2) between Kuala Lipis and Wakaf Bharu in East Malaysia, and the whole train is third class, but it's air conditioned with padded seats and there's a (relatively!) clean toilet in each carriage. There's no need to book in advance, we were the only people in our carriage for the first few hours.

We boarded at 7:30 am and it took around 7 hours to get to Wakaf Bharu. The scenery was stunning and there was so much to look at as we chugged along through the middle of the jungle, stopping at every village along the way.

At Wakaf Bharu train station we caught a taxi to Kota Bharu, a quiet town with an amazing market (more on that next!).