Nooraini Mydin’s 50th birthday passed without much of a marker, so she was determined to do something memorable for her 60th. She had always been curious about the Trans-Siberian railway but thought “how about I make it really exciting and get the train from London all the way to Kuala Lumpur?” she says. “I am such a chicken, or I was at that time. I used to get very lonely when I travelled alone.” But in August 2016 she set off with two suitcases – containing her laptop, to write about the journey, and several packets of instant ramen noodles, for comfort and economy reasons – for the seven-week journey.
She had had a varied life up to that point. She had been a journalist in Malaysia, but moved to the UK in the 80s, where she had a difficult, short-lived marriage. She worked as a council press officer, in the bakery at Harrods and in admin at a hospital. “Then I started collecting degrees,” she says. She studied law, but didn’t become a lawyer, instead working in the law department of University College London.
