While I practice close encounters with cooked-food stalls, sex traders and oncoming traffic, wheel spins, split-second lurches and even one hand-brake spin, I try to remember what Dao Phrya Bridge is famous for. Why have I heard of it at all?

We are very happy. Sabai means feeling good and sanuk means having fun. We are both as we race toward the bridge in demonic haste, with Pichai chanting in Pali, the ancient language of the Gautama Buddha, for protection from accidents. He asks also of the Buddhist saints that we do not accidentally kill anyone who does not deserve it, a touchy point with Pichai.

Krung Thep means City of Angels, but we are happy to call it Bangkok if it helps to separate a farang from his money.

3

I remembered what Dao Phrya Bridge was famous for.

“Squatters, a whole village. They’ve been there for more than twenty years. They are all tribespeople from the northwest, Karen. They have a big still. Gambling and whisky are their main industries, with a little prostitution, begging and theft to make ends meet.”

“They must pay protection. What district is it?”

I shrug. “Fourteenth, fifteenth?”

“The fifteenth is Suvit’s. He’s a bastard.”

I nod. “He will be reborn as a louse in the anus of a dog.”

“Not before he’s spent eighty-two thousand years as a hungry ghost.”

“Is it eighty-two?”

“That is the standard sentence for men like him.”