Every year my father makes it a point to take the family on a vacation. This year as it is every year, we put it to a vote to decide what our holiday destination will be. Even though we all decided on Bali in Indonesia, we gave in to my little sister who insisted on visiting Penang in West Malaysia, otherwise known as ‘The Pearl of the Orient’.
After all the preparations had been made, a week later, we found ourselves standing on the platform of the railway station awaiting the ‘Langkawi Express’. The train would be taking us to Penang as my father firmly believed that half the fun of a vacation was in getting to one’s destination. My sister and I were very excited as this was the first time we would be going on such a long train journey. We would even have to spend the night on board the train.
The train arrived promptly on schedule. We found that our father had booked us two compartments on board the train. I had to share my compartment with my little sister while my father and mother occupied the other one. The bunks were rather hard, but who could sleep anyway? We were too engrossed with staring out the window into the darkness that was punctuated only by the lights of all the little towns that our train passed through and sometimes, stopped at to pick up passengers.
There were a number of Caucasian tourists on board. We were unable to make out what they were saying as they seemed to be speaking languages other than English. We had our supper in the buffet coach and I must say that the food was delicious but expensive. My sister and I decided to do a bit of exploring and made off on our own after promising our parents that we wouldn’t wander too far. We ran into the train conductor who was kind enough to give us a guided tour. He told us that the train had twelve carriages and that the diesel driven locomotive pulled all of these along. Some of the carriages contained compartments like ours, while other contained sleeping berths and ordinary seats. All the carriages were air conditioned and quite spacious.
I could see my little sister starting to yawn, well so much for staying awake the whole trip. We started to make our way back to our compartments and were soon fast asleep. We were still asleep when our train pulled into the station in Butterworth from where we look the ferry to Penang Island.
Vocabulary
promptly swiftly
engrossed busy
