Bangkok (CNN) – Once upon a time, a locals paddled rice on Bangkok’s Khao San Road. Lots of it.
Barge after barge paddled, and later motorized, down the expansive Chao Phraya River and into the mouth of the Banglamphu Canal, where they dropped thousands of tons in jute bags at nearby wholesalers.
Smaller vendors opened shops south of the canal, where an unpaved alley was made so thick by the rice trade that King Chulalongkorn had a real road built in 1892. The cobblestone strip, which was only 410 meters long, was not large enough to be named after a historical Thai figure or principle of nation building, unlike other arterial roads in the city, so it was simply called Soi Khao San (Milled Rice Lane) .
While Banglamphu thrived on rice profits, the district expanded to include clothing (including Thailand’s first ready-made school uniforms), buffalo leather shoes, jewelry, gold leaf, and costumes and regalia for Thai classical dance theater. Local demand for entertainment spawned two musical comedy houses, Thailand’s first national record label (Kratai) and one of the kingdom’s first silent movie theaters.
But just 100 years later, an invasion of international backpackers almost completely eclipsed the local market culture. Started as a trickle in the late 1970s, when Bangkok was an end point for the Asian hippie trail, the influx turned into a tidal wave in the 1990s.
Guesthouses proliferate
I don’t think anyone could have predicted the inexorable evolution of the road and the surrounding neighborhood.
When I first walked Khao San Road on a research trip for the first edition of Lonely Planet’s Thailand guide, 40 years ago, it was lined with two-story shophouses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
At the street level were rows of shoe shops, Thai-Chinese coffee shops, noodle vendors, grocers, and motorcycle repair shops. Owners or tenants lived upstairs.
A few rice merchants held their ground, but as 10-wheel trucks had taken over from inland vessels, most of the rice transport and trade had moved elsewhere.
While Yaowarat, Bangkok’s Chinatown, was the main commercial focus for Chinese merchants and residents, and Phahurat served the Indian community, Banglamphu was clearly a more Thai empire. Just around the corner on Chakkaphong and Phra Sumen roads, artisan shops still crafted costumes and masks for Thai classical dance drama performers.
The 1st (1982) and 2nd (1984) edition of the Lonely Planet Thailand guide.
Joe Cummings
I spent a long, hot day jotting down notes on the Grand Palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaew), the Temple of the Reclining Buddha (Wat Pho), and the Giant Swing, all of which are inside. a kilometer radius from Khao San Road.
These are arguably the city’s main attractions, so when I saw two Chinese-Thai hotels on Khao San Road, I immediately thought I’d recommend them in my guidebook as a convenient base for travelers. The Nith Chareon Suk Hotel and the Sri Phranakhon Hotel were nearly identical in their modest amenities, costing $ 5 a night at the time, and were intended for Thai merchants buying wholesale goods in Banglamphu to sell the land.
In a narrow alley nearby, I was even more excited when I came across VS Guest House, recently opened by a Banglamphu family who were taking guests to their 1920s vintage log home for $ 1.50 per person. Further exploration of alleyways yielded two more family-run, comparably priced guesthouses, Bonny and Tum.
Rintipa Detkajon, owner of the guest house on Khao San Road
These two hotels and three guesthouses made up the sum of Khao San Road accommodations that I listed in the first “Thailand: A Travel Survival Kit,” published the following year, 1982.
When I returned a year later to update the information for the second edition, five more guesthouses had popped up along or just outside of Khao San, so I dutifully added these for the 1984 edition.
From then on, the number of places to stay had increased exponentially every time I returned to Banglamphu for the guide’s bi-annual update. Within a decade, the choices multiplied, block by block, from Khao San Road to other streets and alleys in the district, until the number of backpacker hotels and guesthouses exceeded 200.
“The Beach” effect
In the mid-1990s, the neighborhood was a global phenomenon, the largest backpacker center of the three K’s – Kathmandu, Khao San and Kuta Beach. In addition to housing and feeding the largest transient backpacker population in the world, Khao San Road became a world record contender for its black market in unlicensed cassettes, CDs and DVDs, fake IDs, counterfeit books and branded suitcases.
Dozens of bucket shops offered unparalleled bargain prices for little-known airlines flying imaginative routes to virtually every airport in the world.
Alex Garland, an unknown writer at the time (now famous for directing sci-fi movies “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation),” boosted Khao San’s badboy reputation with his 1996 cult novel, “The Beach.” Based on Garland’s own travels in Thailand, the first seven chapters take place on Khao San Road, where Richard, a young English backpacker, meets an eccentric Scotsman who calls himself Daffy Duck and gives him a secret map to ‘the beach’.
Prior to the pandemic, Khao San Road was a popular place for travelers and locals to celebrate Songkran, the Thai New Year festival.
PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL / AFP / AFP via Getty Images
The novel describes a room in a typical Khao San guesthouse of the time: “One wall was concrete – the side of the building. The others were formica and bare. They moved when I touched them. I felt like I leaned against one it would fall over and maybe hit another, and all the walls of the adjoining rooms would collapse like dominoes. Just before the ceiling, the walls stopped and covered the room with a strip of metal mosquito net. “
A film adaptation directed by Danny Boyle and starring Leonard DiCaprio in world cinemas in 2000, and likely introduced Khao San Road to a wider audience than the novel or my Lonely Planet guides.
That same year, Italian electronic music producer Spiller released a video of his dance song ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’, recorded in Bangkok with a prominent scene at the end where Spiller and singer Sophie Ellis-Baxter dance in an underground Khao San Road club.
In an article in New Yorker that year, Khao San Road was described as’ half the world’s travel hub, a place thriving on the desire to be elsewhere ‘because it was’ the safest, easiest and most Westernized place to start a journey. through Asia. ”
Khao San Road today
According to the Khao San Business Association, in 2018 the road saw an astonishing 40,000-50,000 tourists a day in the high season and 20,000 a day in the low season.
With figures like that, it wasn’t much of a surprise when the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority announced in 2019 that it was investing $ 1.6 million to turn Khao San Road into a regulated ‘international pedestrian street’.
Perhaps initiated in part to counter Khao San’s somewhat unsavory reputation, the project was set to be completed in late 2020, featuring a paved road and walkways, and retractable bollards designating spaces for 250-350 licensed Thai sellers selected by lottery.
Vehicles would be banned from the road from 9am to 9pm daily.
Former Lonely Planet author Joe Cummings stands alongside Rintipa Detkajon, owner of VS Guest House on a visit in January 2021.
Ian Taylor
When the coronavirus pandemic forced Thailand to close its borders in April 2020, the number of international tourists dropped to zero almost overnight. Khao San Road partially recovered when domestic travel reopened in July, and by the time the refurbished Khao San launched in November 2020, the weekends found the road full of Thai youth and a smaller number of expats.
Pubs along the street that typically drew 80% European customers turned nearly 90% Thai.
A vibrant 10-day series of light installations called Khao San Hide and Seek drew a steady crowd in November. The installations were supplemented with live performances by nearly 20 bands. Local studios conducted workshops focused on traditional Banglamphu arts, such as the embroidery of khon costumes (classical Thai dance drama), the preparation of traditional khaotom nam woon (sticky rice triangles steamed in fragrant pandanus leaves) and the making of thaeng yuak (fresh banana trunks carved into intricate patterns, for use in funerals, monastic ordination and other Buddhist ceremonies).
The neighborhood suffered another setback when a second wave of coronavirus cases peaked in early January 2021. The government quickly ordered the closure of all entertainment venues in Bangkok, and Khao San Road once again almost emptied.
Later that month, when I revisited an abandoned Khao San, I decided to stop at VS Guesthouse, the first and oldest guesthouse still standing. Every other neighborhood guesthouse I passed that day was tightly closed, but to my surprise the vintage wooden doors to USA were wide open.
I talked to the members of the family who owned the house, now in their fourth generation. Rintipa Detkajon, the eldest of two sisters who take care of the family today, remembers how her late father, Vongsavat, started taking in foreigners around 1980 so they could sleep on the living room floor.
“I was about 16 years old when our first guest, an Australian man, stayed overnight,” she said. “Foreigners traveled so peacefully back then. They were interested in history and culture, unlike the young people we see today who seem more interested in getting drunk and partying.”
The family has added to the log home over the years, reaching a peak of 18 rooms at one point. They are now operating 10 rooms for $ 10 a night. The day I visited, only one room was occupied by an American who stayed for a long time.
I asked Rintipa about the lack of business as a result of the pandemic.
“It’s not just us, it’s the whole world,” she said. ‘We are all in this together. This is our house, so we’ll survive. ‘