Yesterday it felt like everyone in Klong Toey joined us at "Mercy Centre" as we celebrated the Thai New Year. Perhaps not totally everybody, but at least several hundred neighbors - mostly old folks and other slum "reputables" and, of course, our kids. There was great music played on third-hand instruments and dancing in the streets - old-time barn dancing led by the Motorbike Racing Granny, our favorite street vendor who is now 76. She has a bit of a bum knee, made stiff from kick-starting her stubborn "mini-chopper," a motorbike modified into her mobile coffee cart. Fortunately, she had a "wee swallie" or two or three from a not so well hidden flask of amber liquid that loosened her knees and had her stomping up a storm. 

The cook found them at the side entrance just before dawn, when you could still make out the stars: Six-year-old Fon, her mum and our ferocious, slum-born, street-wise guard dog, all curled up asleep together. The "ferocious" guard dog, by the way, in spite of all training to the contrary, welcomes strangers; the more shabbily they dress, the more friendly he becomes. 

A single, rather large, brown-furred, black-winged fruit bat came swooping, screeching out of the sunset sky like it was making a bombing run over the Pai Singto slum on New Ratchadapisek Road. No one had ever seen anything like it. 

They knocked down the door, then searched her house, and put handcuffs on her second son. Now Auntie Jan would have two of three in prison. Plus six brothers and sisters. More common in our fair land than you would want to think. 

And they came on a no-license motorcycle - the Night Riders - two men on one bike, helmet visors down, the man on the back with a pistol in hand, special 9mm bullets, ready to shoot. Ready to scratch another name off their "list". It's blood and death when the Night Riders find their man. There's never any mercy. It's a job, a name, that's all. Just meeting their quota for the Biggie Bigs. And so they shot "Motorbike Kheng." Three shots in the head, close range. He was a good man, somebody you'd cheer for if you knew him, somebody who will be greatly missed by family and friends in the slaughterhouse here in Klong Toey. 

She'll never win the Bangkok Grandmother of the Year award, but she's definitely Granny of the Year in the Klong Toey slum. Yai Sing, or Granny Sing as she's known _ and I'll explain that in a minute _ rolls her own smokes and earns her own way from her motorcycle-propelled coffee cart. Sports a trademark ancient pair of second-hand 20-baht "shades'' her granddaughter Mot swapped from a "trader'' in a back part of the slum. Two plastic bags of Granny Sing's original blend of ice coffee for the shades.