needed to keep moving .
Socks on , boots on , back into the motorised melee heading for Thailand ’ s capital , I looked at my map and became instantly depressed .
Bangkok traffic , for those who haven ’ t driven or ridden there , is mad . Unlike Vietnam , where an incredibly dense river of vehicles flows smoothly and unimaginably efficiently in every direction at once , Bangkok is a seething mass of stopstart , ram-raid , blast-honk and jerkswerve polluted insanity .
Delicate young women sit sidesaddle on motorbike taxis , risking instant kneecap removal several times each minute . Filthy , smoky , belching trucks force riders to veer onto pavements to avoid being crushed to death . Thick black fumes spew out from every mechanical orifice within sight , making it essential for all riders to ride with a bandanna tied over their face , Lone Ranger-style . This also helps the riders remain unidentifiable if they decide to swerve alongside and swipe your camera or luggage . Bangkok is mad indeed .
Another madness , from my perspective , anyway , is that motorbikes are banned from motorways and highway overpasses .
Even though my bike was grunty enough to run with anything on the highway , I was forbidden to use the best , quickest , and most direct roads available . I had to creep along narrow , bumpy , twisty ground-level backstreets running parallel to the elevated highways , looping round street markets , traffic lights , random truck-dismantling teams , apparently blind pedestrians , and doomed chickens . And past that cop holding my licence .
I ’ d realised some time before that the best way to navigate those highway-tracking side streets was to follow local moped riders . They knew the neighbourhood , they threaded this way and that , they
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