Bangkok (CNN) – One day, the locals were eating rice on Khao San Road in Bangkok. Lots of it.
Aak after aak rowed and later rode down the vast Chao Phraya River into the mouth of the Banglamphu Canal, where they unloaded thousands of tons in jute bags at wholesalers in the area.
Smaller vendors opened shops south of the canal, where a dirt road became so thick with the rice trade that King Chulalongkorn ordered a proper road built in 1892. The paved strip was only 410 meters long and was not large enough to be named after. a historical Thai figure or nation-building principle, unlike other city roads, it was therefore called Soi Khao San (Milled Rice Lane).
As Banglamphu flourished with rice profits, the district expanded into clothing (including Thailand’s first ready-made school uniform), buffalo shoes, jewelry, gold leaf and costumes, and regalia for Thai classical dance theater. Local demand for entertainment gave birth to two musical comedy houses, the first national record company of Thailand (Kratai), and one of the first cinemas of the silent kingdom in the kingdom.
But just 100 years later, an invasion of international backpackers almost completely obscured local market culture. Beginning in the late 1970s, when Bangkok was an endpoint for the Asian hippie trail, the influx became a tidal wave in the 1990s.
Guest houses increase
I think no one would be able to predict the relentless evolution of the road and surrounding environment.
When I first visited Khao San Road on a research trip for the first issue of Lonely Planet’s Thailand guide, 40 years ago, it was lined with late-floor and early 20th-century two-story shops.
At street level, there were rows of shoe stores, Thai-Chinese coffee shops, noodle shop, groceries and motorcycle repair shops. Owners or tenants lived above.
A few rice traders stuck around, but as ten-wheeled trucks took over at riverbanks, rice transportation and trade mostly moved to another location.
While Yaowarat, Chinatown in Bangkok, was the main commercial focus for Chinese traders and residents, and Phahurat served the Indian community, Banglamphu was clearly a more Thai empire. Around the corner on Chakkaphong and Phra Sumen streets, craft shops continued to produce costumes and masks for classical Thai dance drama artists.
The first (1982) and 2nd (1984) editions of the Lonely Planet Thailand guide.
Joe Cummings
I spent a long, hot day taking notes on the Grand Palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaew), the Temple of the Lying Buddha (Wat Pho) and the Giant Swing, all within a mile radius of Khao San Road.
These are probably the main attractions in the city, and when I noticed two Chinese-Thai hotels on Khao San Road, I immediately thought of recommending them in my guide as a convenient base for travelers. Nith Chareon Suk Hotel and Sri Phranakhon Hotel were almost the same in their modest amenities, and at the time they cost $ 5 a night, and Thai traders bought wholesale in Banglamphu to sell land.
Down a narrow street nearby, I was even more excited to come across USA Guest House, which was recently opened by a Banglamphu family who took guests to their 1920s wooden house for $ 1.50 per head. Further alley exploration resulted in two more guest houses being run by the family, Bonny and Tum.
Rintipa Detkajon, Khao San Road guest house owner
These two hotels and three guest houses form the sum of the accommodation in Khao San Road that I appear in the first “Thailand: A Travel Survival Kit”, the following year, 1982.
When I returned a year later to update information for the second edition, five more guest houses appeared next to Khao San or just outside Khao San, and I dutifully added them for the 1984 edition.
From then on, every time I returned to Banglamphu for updating the guide, I increased exponentially twice a year. Within a decade, the choices spread, block by block, from Khao San Road to other streets and alleys in the district, until backpacker hotels and guest houses numbered over 200.
The beach effect
By the mid-1990s, the neighborhood was a worldwide phenomenon, the largest backpacker center among the three Ks – Kathmandu, Khao San and Kuta Beach. In addition to being the largest passing backpacker population in the world, Khao San Road has become a world record contender in its black market in unlicensed cassettes, CDs and DVDs, fake IDs, counterfeit books and trademark cases.
Dozens of bucket stores offer unparalleled cheap fares to little-known airlines that fly imaginative routes to virtually any airport in the world.
Alex Garland, a then-unknown writer (now known for directing sci-fi films “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation”), further strengthened Khao San’s bad boy representative 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 Scot who calls himself Daffy Duck who tells him a secret map to “the beach” give.
Before the pandemic, Khao San Road was a popular spot for travelers and locals alike 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 from the era: “One wall was concrete – the side of the building. The other was Formica and bare. They were moving when I touched them. I had the felt that if I leaned against one it would fall over and maybe hit another, and all the walls of the surrounding rooms would collapse like dominoes.Just short of the ceiling the walls stopped and a strip of metal mosquito net covered the space . ‘
An adaptation by Danny Boyle, starring Leonard DiCaprio, hit world movie theaters in 2000, and Khao San Road probably suggested to a larger audience than the novel or my Lonely Planet guides.
In the same year, the Italian producer Spiller, an electronic music producer, released a video of his dance track “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)”, which was shot in Bangkok with a prominent scene where Spiller and singer Sophie Ellis- Baxter in an underground Khao dance San Road club.
In an article in New Yorker of that year, Khao San Road is described as ‘the travel center for half the world, a place where the desire to be somewhere else’, because it’s the safest, easiest and most westernized place was about a trip through Asia. ‘
Khao San Road today
According to the Khao San Business Association, the road in 2018 has an astonishing 40,000-50,000 tourists per day in the high season and 20,000 per day in the low season.
With such numbers, it was not much of a surprise when the Metropolitan Authority in Bangkok announced in 2019 that it was investing $ 1.6 million to turn Khao San Road into a regulated ‘international runway’.
The project was perhaps partially started to counteract the somewhat distasteful reputation of Khao San. The project would be completed by the end of 2020, with a paved road and footpaths, and drawpole boards to indicate spaces for 250-350 licensed Thai vendors, selected by lotteries.
Vehicles are banned from the road from 09:00 to 21:00 daily.
Former Lonely Planet author Joe Cummings joins US Guesthouse owner Rintipa Detkajon on a visit in January 2021.
Ian Taylor
When the coronavirus pandemic forced Thailand to close its borders in April 2020, international tourist arrivals dropped to almost overnight. Khao San Road partially recovered when domestic travel reopened in July, and by the time the revamped Khao San was launched in November 2020, the weekend found that the road was full of Thai youth as well as fewer numbers of expats.
Bars along the street that boast 80% European customers have become almost 90% Thai.
A lively series of ten-day light installations called Khao San Hide and Seek attracted a steady crowd in November. The installations were complemented by live performances from nearly 20 bands. Local studios led workshops focused on traditional Banglamphu arts, such as the embroidery of khon (classical Thai dance drama) costumes, the preparation of traditional khaotom nam live (sticky rice triangles steamed in fragrant pandanus leaves), and the production of fresh thaang (tha intricately carved banana tree trunks, patterns for use in funerals, monastery dedication and other Buddhist ceremonies).
The neighborhood suffered another setback when a second wave of coronavirus cases increased in early January 2021. The government quickly ordered that all reception halls in Bangkok be closed, and Khao San Road was almost completely emptied again.
When I visited a deserted Khao San later that month, I decided to stop by VS Guesthouse, the first and oldest guest house still standing. Every other guesthouse in the neighborhood where I passed that day was tightly closed, but to my surprise, the old wooden doors to USA stood wide open.
I talked to the members of the family who own the house, now in their fourth generation. Rintipa Detkajon, the elder of two sisters caring for the home today, recalled how her late father, Vongsavat, began taking in foreigners around 1980 so that they could sleep on the family’s living room floor.
“I was about 16 years old when our first guest, an Australian man, stayed the night,” she says. “Back then, foreigners traveled so quietly. They were interested in history and culture, unlike young people we see these days, and they seem to be more drunk and partying.”
The family has added to the wooden house over the years and at one point reached a peak of 18 rooms. They now operate 10 rooms for $ 10 a night. The day I visited, only one room was occupied by an American who stayed long-term.
I asked Rintipa about the lack of business due to the pandemic.
“It’s not just us, it’s the whole world,” she said. “We are all together on this. This is our home, so we will survive.”