Al Culler’s strange and savage saunter through the Thai and Cambodian badlands…

The screaming in my head wouldn’t go away. A mad mixture of traffic noise, the gearbox’s complaining whine and the unruly wail of the two-stroke engine down below my knees. Bangkok traffic at a standstill. Fuming cagers berserk on their horns, puffed up visages about to explode into rage. The vast majority of drivers up to their necks in huge finance payments just to make some necessary face.

The whole Thai edifice about to collapse after a military coup and fast exit by the prime-minister. Surface calmness laced by inner insanity and the sheer fear that things, for once, might actually be revealed for what they were. Would the Thais follow the Khmers into the psycho killing fields? Only real solution, join the masses and live for the passing moment, ignore the pure insanity of the natives when the lights are turned out and no outsiders watching.

Took the Yamaha TZM150 along the pavement. Ped’s going crazy as I stared them down. Used the wail of the degutted exhaust to clear a path. The front end flipped up a little as I hammered the throttle, a group of school kids scattered but smiling rather than scowling. Nearly took out the legs of a emaciated beggar who looked frightened out his tiny mind by the sudden, screaming, appearance of a motorcycle into his limited world.

Silom Road for a short stretch, going the wrong way against the traffic. Taxi and bus drivers out for my guts, but I floated like a butterfly, took the bike around their flanks and exited the maelstrom for the home stretch to the Soi 10 HQ.

Somgrai outside, as usual his tuned Honda in pieces on the pavement. A couple of far gone whores loitered nearby, not yet twenty but so out of it they might as well have been pensioners for all the joy they offered – having spent their youth in Chinese brothels where they were serviced by ten or so men every day. Somgrai an enforcer for the boss, the kind of malevolent presence that gave me pangs of remorse and fear even when I was completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

‘Bossy, wants to see you, boy.’ His leer indicated the time I’d sneaked a look at one of the packages I’d delivered might be about to catch up with me. Being only half Thai, and looking almost totally farang, I was the obvious scapegoat if anything went wrong – one of the major reasons for employing me as it was assumed that I had no face to lose. Having been educated in the UK didn’t help, my Thai laughable even by the standards of short-stay tourists.