What does Bam know that I don’t? That’s the question I keep mulling over as my taxi crawls through the Bangkok rush hour. There are cars in front and many others behind, cars overhead and a long, long line of them below. Welcome to the city of angels.

I think of Bam when I see a cyclist weaving through the traffic, a single mobile person in a gridlocked city. What I know is that cycling in Bangkok sounds mad and probably is mad. But Bam is part of a road safety campaign to persuade Thais, and children in particular, to wear helmets when they ride. The fact that he is an orangutan from the Dusit Zoo means the campaign has grabbed the headlines, helping Bam get his message across. He also seems to have created a spike in the number of cyclists. So having wasted another hour or two sitting in the taxi, I decide I’m going to cycle in Bangkok.

I have cycled in London, Paris and New York. I have ridden through Chianti and the Languedoc, have pedalled across Hyde Park Corner on a regular basis and now I am going to tackle Bangkok. The strange thing is that once I have made the decision, I start seeing cyclists all over the place. Two even ride past the front of the St Regis Hotel as I step out of the airport taxi. I am about to say something about riding on the pavement when I realise that half of it has been turned into a cycle lane.