Journey without maps

  It has been almost exactly a decade since I was last in Vientiane. The country feels very different. Downtown (near the river) is empty on a Sunday afternoon, the fountain has lost its charm and its restaurants, and there is clearly an increased impact of China.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the new rail infrastructure that links Laos to China.  The Laos section of the line was constructed at a cost of around $6 billion. The freight and passenger traffic have been growing rapidly since the service opened in 2021. The railway opens up a faster logistics and export route for land-locked Laos to the large Chinese market in the north. More than 20 million passengers have also taken the journey so far.  The company that owns and operates the line is 70 percent owned by Chinese interests and 30 percent by the Laos state. Laos has also guaranteed the $3.6 billion project debt, at an annual debt service cost of around $150-$200m per annum. It is likely that freigh...

I love trains. I have taken hard seats and hard sleepers across Europe, India and China. I have experienced the luxury of soft sleeper on the Trans Mongolian from Beijing to Moscow, and ridden on the roof of a train in war-torn Cambodia. This month I am taking a train from Laos to China, and then to Vietnam.  I had thought I would take the train all the way from Singapore to Laos and onwards, but I have done much of the Singapore to Bangkok journey before. Given the time constraints, and work obligations, I decided to fly to Vientiane for my first meeting, and then take a train to my last in Hanoi next weekend.  As there is no train from Laos to Vietnam, the obvious alternative is the train from Laos to China and then to Hanoi. The latter just reopened last month after being suspended since Covid in 2020. So here we are on day one of this mini trip. 10:00 Scoot from Singapore to Vientiane.

The rain threatened as the train pulled into Glasgow Central shortly after 9am. I needed to get some cash for use later in the museum locker (I planned ahead) and then walked across the street to the bus stop. Fifteen minutes later I arrived opposite the Kelvingrove Art Gallery And Museum. I hadn't realised that on Fridays the museum doesn't open until 11am so I had time on my hands (it is 10am most other days). I started to walk towards the park that held the statue to Lord Kelvin (more on him, again, later) when the threatened rain started to descend. I sought refuge in a nearby excellent coffee shop and enjoyed two delicious cups of single origin coffee. At five minutes to eleven I joined a small queue of people waiting to enter the museum. The museum itself is free, but there is a charge of two pounds (cash only) to deposit bags or coats in the left luggage area on the ground floor. I was happy to leave my coat and suitcase there, and then explored the museum at a fairly co...

 Final morning walk in Largs along the beachfront to the Pencil. The Pencil is a memorial to the battle of Largs in 1263. Although celebrated every year in the Viking Festival. it was probably a minor skirmish between Viking raiders and King Alexander III of Scotland. I went back, heel-scuffing the tide-line of Largs, where once I lobbed sea-stones, dulled and thumb-warmed, into the jelly-white bulge of marooned creatures— their tremble not enough to stop the shatter. The smaller flints I skimmed— quick flack and bounce— across the gunmetal skin of the Clyde. I then packed up the Airbnb and walked up the main street to Largs station for the 08:10 to Glasgow. 

  Largs is Nardini's and Nardini's is Largs.  The Italian family owned ice-cream and coffee place is located deep within my cerebral cortex. I have a specific neuron that responds to the sound of the espresso machine, whooshing fountains of childhood delight. As a youngster I didn't drink coffee as my father told me it would turn my skin yellow. But, I had a sweet tooth and could easily be bribed to be good, or relatively good, for an entire week or two, just with the promise of a Knicker-Bocker Glory ice cream. They used to be 75p, they are now about a tenner. The 11:45 pulled into Largs, and I dragged my bag purposefully down the seafront to Nardini's. I hadn't been good, so no ice-cream, but a bowl of soup, a sandwich and a delightful coffee.  Years before Starbucks and Costa, Nardini's was . 'Lord, who shall I say sent me. Tell them 'I am'', and where should I drink coffee? Tell them Nardini's. As a teenager and young adult I would sit in...

The ScotRail train pulled out of Stranraer and made its way slowly up the Ayrshire coast. I was reciting Burns poems in my head when we pulled into Ayr, and I got off to change trains. As a child I had memorised Burns, and his description of Ayr is in Tam O Shanter: '..this truth fand honest Tam O Shanter, As he frae Ayr a night did canter: Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses for honest men an bonnie lassies'  Next stop was Kilwinning for a coffee and a square sausage sandwich. Before getting the final train to Largs.  There has always been something emotional for me pulling into Largs. As a child we would drive to Largs from London, and as soon as we saw the sea our hearts would jump. I would be in the middle of my two sisters in the back of an end-of-times British car - Morris, Marina, Ambassador - all with the same door handles. My Dad would be driving and also visibly cheered about reaching his birthplace and heart-land. My mum glad that the 9 hour drive was soon to e...