On the rumbling, slow train from Gemas, southern Malaysia, I’m seated between a family of seven Tamil-Malaysian women, tiffin boxes clanging as they offer me some lunch. After snapping the obligatory selfies, we have a chat about marriage - they’re on their way to a family wedding in Johor Bahru, a big city and land gateway to Singapore. The train lurches, stopping and starting.
It’s the last stretch of track in Malaysia without a high speed service and the gentle pace gives me cinematic views of seemingly endless fields of palm trees, occasionally punctuated by colourful, faded village homes. Even the elegant old gents cycling on the road parallel to our track are moving faster than this train. “I want to marry an Englishman,” says the teen sister among the group, third of the four generations of women and head babysitter. I tell her I don’t have any suitable cousins, but wish her much luck with the plan.
