Our route up Malaya via Johore, Kuala Lumpur and Prei (opposite Penang Island) was very dull. The railway went through unending rubber estates. Rubber trees of all ages and sizes stretched away either side into the distance. A rubber estate at the best of times is not very interesting or beautiful, and after looking at them for three days we wanted never to see another. At each station there was a frantic rush of mess orderlies to draw the messy stew and rice that were our rations twice a day; the Nips used to clout the last arrival among the orderlies on principle – next time someone else would arrive last! Luckily we had some of the Red Cross stuff still with us, and on most of the stations we’d bought, unofficially, little sponge cakes and fruit. The Nip sergeant was not at all unreasonable. At each station there were enormous queues outside the primitive latrines; there being nothing like that ever laid on by the Nips. We saw the beautiful island of Penang, like a tropical Gibraltar, lying across the deep blue sea that separated it from Prei station.

Not far north of Penang we came to the old Thai border, for the new border given to Thailand by the Nips contained the four northern states of Malaya and no Thais. We halted for some while at this little boundary station and were able to look around us and try to notice any differences from Malaya. In the first place a slight racial difference between the peoples was immediately apparent. The Thais were a tough looking lot, of broad physique, lighter in colour than most Malays and with a rather more Chinese cast of countenance. Most of them wore a scarf of sorts tied round their waists and over their shorts, which was turned down in a kind of bow that hung over their stomachs. The better class Thais were immaculately turned out in snowy white shirts, perfect shorts and plenty of Brylcream. We noticed too, some very attractive girls. Also the first Buddhist priests we had seen were standing on the platform; mostly they looked intelligent, clean and humorous young men, their heads shaven, and wearing only sandals and the yellow robes common to the Buddhist priests throughout that part of Asia. One of these priests offered me a couple of dollars for a belt I was wearing. The Thai army, in their brown uniforms, were also in evidence, and they were sporting Lee-Enfield rifles handed over to them by the Nips; they seemed to be greatly amused by the whole business and never interfered with us.