Khao San Road, Bangkok's most famous "walking street," is certainly familiar to you if you've ever been to Thailand. But do you know the origin of its name? Or why this particular street has become the "default" street for so many travelers visiting Thailand for the first time? It was with these questions in mind that I decided some time ago to write an article about this famous street, known to almost everyone.
As luck would have it, CNN (no less!) beat me to it with an article specifically on the origins of Khao San . This article has already been translated and published on French-language websites dedicated to Thailand. So I'm a bit late to the party… but I'm mentioning this, even though it's just my opinion, to avoid being accused of plagiarism or anything like that, even though this article made my job considerably easier, and I was inevitably inspired by it to some extent.
Khao San Road = White Rice Street
If we take the English translation, Khao San Road is translated as "Milled Rice Lane." " Milled " can be translated as ground or milled , in the sense of being processed by a machine or a process used, in this case, to "whiten" the rice, that is, to remove the outer husk surrounding the grain. "Milled Rice" can therefore be simply translated as "polished rice" or "whitened rice," meaning that the grain has been prepared to be ready for consumption. The key takeaway from this little language lesson is that what was then just a small, narrow alley was used by merchants from all over the country to sell their sacks of white rice. Its advantage was its proximity to several canals (the famous klongs), which flowed into the Chao Phraya River a little further on, a veritable highway of the time.
We must put things in context. We are then at the end of the 19th century and Khao San is located between the Klong Rong Mai, a canal artificially dug to isolate the new city, which then forms the island of Rattanakosin (this dates back to the end of the 18th century), and the Bang Lamphu canal, also artificial and added with the same function as the Klong Rong Mai by expanding the surface area of the city which was then in full expansion.
The two canals were then joined by a small secondary canal, which is none other than today's Soi Rambuttri, the street adjacent to Khao San Road. It's also important to understand that at that time, roads didn't yet exist in Bangkok , as the first official street, New Road (which became Charoen Krung Road, about which I will dedicate an article soon), was only created in 1863 during the reign of Rama V. The main means of transport was then the boat, and the canals were filled with barges, which converged on the floating markets that proliferated in Bangkok.
It must be said that even back then, Siam was one of the world's largest rice producers , and the Bang Lamphu district saw tons and tons of rice sacks passing through. The Bang Lamphu market had become the largest rice market in all of Bangkok, and indeed in the entire country. Sales stalls spread throughout the area around the Bang Lamphu canal, until shops began to appear at the end of Khao San Road, in what was then just a narrow, muddy alley.
To improve trade and expand this part of the market, a proper road was built there in 1892 by King Chulalongkorn (Rama V). Khao San was born . The paved alley was only 410 meters long at the time, not long enough to be named after an important Thai figure (lest that person resent being associated with this "lesser" street), which was common practice then. It was therefore decided to call it " Soi Khao San ," the White Rice Alley, quite simply.
Rice for backpackers
Okay, so a street appeared in this location, fine, but how did we go from selling rice to selling buckets and carts of Pad Thai ? You have to understand that a neighborhood that attracts people eventually attracts investors other than those in the rice trade. After all, if people are coming to the Bang Lamphu area, primarily for its rice, that represents a significant number of potential customers for buying other things.
This is how Khao San Road saw the emergence of shops selling leather shoes and jewelers, for example . This tradition continues today, as if you stroll along Thanon Tanao, the street perpendicular to Khao San Road, you can still find shops specializing in silver jewelry. Tanao Street is also lined with the shophouses that were once abundant throughout Bangkok—in other words, shops from that era.
The other specialty that would gradually supplant the rice trade turned out to be textiles . This included, notably, the country's first shop to offer ready-to-wear school uniforms , and artisans crafting traditional costumes used for classical Thai dance performances . This came about in line with the times, when a strong demand for the entertainment industry was felt throughout the kingdom. This led to the emergence of two cabarets offering musicals, the appearance of Thailand's first record label (Kratai), and one of the country's very first cinemas, soon followed by others.
At that time, there were no fewer than four cinemas in Bang Lamphu . These were the Wang Chao Prida Cinema (opening in 1907), the Rattanapee Raka Cinema (1909), the Pattanakarn Cinema (1910), and then the Dong Kok Cinema, which began as a theater before converting into a cinema (then named Busayaphan). The latter was located next to the current Nouvo City Hotel, along Samsen Soi 2. It was destroyed by fire in 1961 and has since been replaced by a building housing a bar/karaoke/billiards hall, thus remaining a place dedicated to entertainment. And indeed, at that time, this new "center" of entertainment was further strengthened by the opening, not far from Khao San Road, of the Bangkok National Theatre, which opened its doors in 1965.
The influence of Lonely Planet
It's the late 70s, and tourism in Thailand is still in its infancy . At the time, most tourists stayed in the few large hotels lining the main commercial artery, between Siam and, by extension, along Sukhumvit Road, which was then rapidly expanding. One of its iconic hotels was the now-closed Siam Intercontinental Hotel , built starting in 1964, which occupied a 10-hectare garden belonging to the royal family. As an aside, this hotel was demolished in 2002 to make way for Siam Paragon, the famous shopping mall that is now far from alone along this thoroughfare. The reason I'm telling you this is that the Siam Intercontinental wasn't exactly what Joe Cummings, a travel guide writer then associated with Lonely Planet, which was still a fledgling company, was looking for.
As a reminder, if you're not familiar with the story, Lonely Planet , the famous travel guide that needs no introduction (and no, this isn't sponsored, so no connection, okay?), was created by a young Anglo-Irish couple , Maureen and Tony Wheeler, in 1972 following a long trip that took them across Asia . Eager to share their experience, based on budget travel, they began writing what would become their first guidebook (and, in a way, the ancestor of the blog), published in 1973: Across Asia on the Cheap . You can see, then, that with this theme, Joe Cummings wasn't looking for luxury when his mission was to bring back from his trip what would become the first edition of Lonely Planet Thailand. That was in 1981, exactly 40 years ago.
While scouting locations, Joe Cummings stumbled upon Khao San Road, so to speak. When he first set foot there, remnants of the original market still remained, with a few rice vendors still around. The rest had moved elsewhere, as the canals had been abandoned in favor of roads and the barges replaced by trucks. The street was then mostly lined with houses typical of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the famous shophouses I mentioned in connection with Tanao Street. Khao San Road offered a mix of shoe vendors, small cafes run by Thai-Chinese people, noodle sellers, grocers, and even a motorcycle repairman (yeah, nobody uses that word anymore).
Unlike Yaorawat, the Chinatown, or Prahurat, the neighboring Indian quarter, Bang Lamphu had a decidedly more "Thai" feel , and that in itself is a compelling reason for visitors to immerse themselves in the local culture. Another major advantage is Khao San Road's proximity to Bangkok's main attractions , such as the Grand Palace (including the Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and Wat Pho, both located within a radius of just over 1 km.
That's why, when Joe Cummings noticed two hotels on the street, both charging $5 a night, he immediately thought of recommending them in the upcoming guide as a practical base for travelers. Wandering through the adjacent alleyways, he stumbled upon a newly opened guesthouse, the VS Guesthouse . The family was welcoming guests to their beautiful vintage 20s home for the modest sum of $1,5 per person. It was the first of its kind to open in Khao San Road and is the only one still open 40 years later!
Exploring further, he found two more guesthouses, with similar rates, also run by local families. At that time, Khao San Road thus had only two hotels and these three guesthouses , which primarily served to accommodate wholesalers coming from the provinces to stock up on goods in the Bang Lamphu district. All five establishments are listed in the first edition of the Lonely Thailand guide, then titled "Thailand: A Travel Survival Kit," published in 1982.
The machine is launched
Without necessarily "accusing" Lonely of being the cause of the coming excitement, the fact remains that when Joe Cummings returned to Bangkok to update the guide the following year, five new guesthouses had appeared in the street and its surroundings.
All were meticulously added and included in the 1984 edition of the guide. With each subsequent update, which occurred every six months, our friend Joe could only observe the exponential growth in the number of accommodations. It took just 10 years for Khao San Road and the surrounding streets to be teeming with hotels and guesthouses for backpackers , far exceeding 200 establishments!
→ By the way, I don't particularly recommend staying in Khao San Road itself, as it's too noisy at night, but the surrounding area is still nice with plenty of accommodation options. More information to find your ideal neighborhood in Bangkok.
The “Beach” effect
When people think of Thailand today, many immediately think of the film "The Beach," starring Leonardo DiCaprio. But did you know that before it was a film, it was a novel? And this novel is the work of Alex Garland , a budding writer and virtually unknown at the time (who would later become a screenwriter and director; check out his Wikipedia page if you're interested). While the story he tells is fiction, the elements he uses are based on his own experiences as a backpacker , which led him, among other places, to stay on Khao San Road in the mid-90s.
And at that time, the backpacker street had a reputation for offering just about anything and everything to visitors . It must be said that there was a kind of competition between the 3 Ks, these 3 places known for attracting many backpackers: Kathmandu (Nepal), Kuta Beach (in Bali, Indonesia) and Khao San Road, considered at the time to be the most important in terms of accommodation options and the number of people passing through.
In addition to its cheap hotels and abundant street food, Khao San Road was then known for its black market selling pirated cassettes, CDs, and DVDs, as well as counterfeit ID cards, driver's licenses, books, and a plethora of other counterfeit goods (especially backpacks). This "golden age" lasted for a good decade after Garland's visit, as it was a Khao San I also knew when I first set foot there in 2006.
But it's this bad reputation of Khao San that Alex Garland wanted to capture in the opening chapters of his novel "The Beach," when his protagonist, Richard, a young English backpacker (Garland's own nationality), meets the eccentric Scotsman who calls himself "Daffy Duck" (played in the film by the unforgettable Robert Carlyle). The latter gives him a map leading to the famous secret beach, the heart of the plot for the rest of the novel, which will forever bring the beach in question, Maya Bay, on Koh Phi Phi Leh, into the spotlight. The novel describes the typical backpacker's room in Khao San at that time: " Only one concrete wall—the building's structural wall. The others were raw Formica. They moved when I touched them. I had the feeling that if I leaned against one, it would fall and perhaps hit another, and all the walls of the neighboring rooms would collapse like dominoes." Just below the ceiling, the walls stopped and the remaining space was a metal strip serving as a mosquito net.
The novel was published in 1996 , and while it enjoyed some success, leading to its film adaptation just four years later, it was Danny Boyle's film that brought Khao San Road into the spotlight for a lasting and wider audience, myself included. That same year, 2000, the Italian DJ Spiller filmed his music video in Bangkok and ended up partying in Khao San with singer Sophie Ellis-Baxter to the tune of his hit "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)." Also that year, a New Yorker article titled "The Place to Disappear" described Khao San Road as " a transit zone for half the world, a place that thrives on the desire to be elsewhere," because it was then "the safest, easiest, and most Westernized place from which to begin a journey through Asia. "
And Khao San Road nowadays?
The Khao San Business Association claimed a staggering figure in 2018 : during peak season (November to February), the small street saw between 40,000 and 50,000 tourists per day! (compared to around 20,000 in the off-season). It's no wonder, then, that the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA) decided in 2019 to invest $1,6 million to renovate the street and transform Khao San into a pedestrian street of international caliber.
The revival of Khao San
Likely initiated to counter the street's "bad reputation," which has clung to it since the late 90s, Khao San Road is getting a makeover to become more organized and "welcoming." The road has been completely redone with paving stones to emphasize its pedestrian nature, which is the case between 9 a.m. and 21 p.m. every day when vehicles are prohibited. Along the sides, retractable bollards mark spaces for 250 to 350 licensed Thai vendors , selected by lottery (yes, really).
Except that in the meantime, the pandemic has knocked on the world's door and Thailand closed its doors to tourists in April 2020, brutally reducing the number of visitors to Khao San Road to almost nothing. If the street still exists today, it is because more Thai youth have been visiting it since the reopening of domestic tourism in July 2020 and even more so since the completion of the renovation and inauguration of the "new" Khao San in November 2020. The pubs lining the street were once 80% filled with foreigners, while today they are up to 90% Thai.
This last sentence is mentioned in the CNN article, but having been to Khao San Road recently, I can confirm that it remains quite empty during the day. While there are a few curious onlookers and locals enjoying the tranquility and the new cafes that have recently opened, the street truly comes alive in the evening. Walking along Rambuttri Street, we noticed the opening of a restaurant, the Botanic Backyard Bar & Restaurant, which was packed that evening. Various events have also been promoted to attract people, including the Khao San Hide and Seek initiative, which features light shows, local crafts, and live music.
Unfortunately, all this was undermined with the arrival of the "second wave" in Thailand, which once again slowed down the excitement of Khao San from last January 2021, with places to go out being, like everywhere else, targeted as a priority to avoid a spread in places where people are least likely to respect barrier gestures (that's the idea anyway).
The Evolution of Khao San According to VS Guesthouse
I'll briefly come back to the VS Guesthouse, mentioned above. It turns out that the latter remained open during the pandemic, unlike the vast majority of other hotels around Khao San which closed their doors waiting for better days, and for some unfortunately, the curtain fell definitively. Something I didn't tell you until then is that the famous CNN article was written by Joe Cummings himself. So he went to see what had become of Khao San in this difficult period and stopped by the veteran GH.
It's still run by the same family , with three sisters taking over from their father, who was the first to decide to welcome visitors into their home. At the time, they didn't even have a separate room for guests, but instead offered strangers the chance to sleep in the living room—you can't get much more hardcore than that in the "homestay" concept. Rintipa Detkajon, the eldest of the siblings, recalls that particular period when, at the age of 16, they welcomed a complete stranger into the living room for the first time in the early 1980s. The family subsequently expanded the house, adding up to 18 rooms at its peak before reducing and stabilizing the number at 10, available from $10 (which is still very affordable).
The day Joe Cummings visited the guesthouse, there was only one guest, an American staying for several months. The opportunity to ask Rintipa how she perceives the loss of income due to the pandemic, and the latter, lucidly, responds:
" It's not just us, it's the whole world," she said. "We're all in the same boat. This is our home, so we will survive. "
But what struck me most in this last paragraph is the notion of clientele, which is different today depending on one's perception, in what they seem to be looking for when coming to Khao San and, more generally, to Thailand. According to Rintipa, " Foreigners back then traveled peacefully. They were genuinely interested in history and culture, unlike the young people we see today, who seem more interested in getting drunk and partying. "
And I can't blame him, just look at the popularity of the full moon and the large number of places dedicated to the party in Thailand (Phi Phi, Patong, Pattaya to name a few).
The right question, and I will conclude like this, is who created the demand? The merchants of Khao San (and elsewhere)? By pushing for consumption and having fun, even if it means distracting these young people from the real interests that Thailand offers outside of this "cheap living" aspect, or is it really this "lost" youth who prefer to have a good time rather than really be interested in this culture that surrounds them?
At a time when Thailand is searching for its identity and wants to attract a wealthier clientele rather than the young people who favor budget travel, I think there's a happy medium to be found. On the one hand, wealth doesn't necessarily mean that culture will be of greater interest and will primarily benefit only a limited number of businesses, as this type of tourism is often confined to specific travel "bubbles" (admittedly, I'm exaggerating a bit).
When young people deserve to enjoy a little of this carefree youth, without abusing it either, and when we must not neglect their curiosity, often pushing them to explore the country more deeply, and ultimately stay longer, than the richest would.
Khao San Road, for its part, aims to be more open to all types of travelers with this redesign, transforming it into a pedestrian street with an international dimension, regardless of age or income. I have no doubt that KSR, as it's known to its friends, will continue to attract travelers and curious visitors for a long time to come; its "spirit" will adapt, and certainly in 30 years, we'll be talking about it differently!
Bonus fact, Joe Cummings currently lives in Chiang Mai, and he's apparently an amazing guitar player, he's said to be often seen playing blues songs with local artists in some of the city's bars!
My sources
Here are some links to articles and pages that I used to write this article (some for period images and photos)
- CNN article on Khao San Road history (article in English)
- The History of Cinemas in Bang Lamphu (Article in Thai, but Google Translate is available!)
- Aerial view of Khao San (site in Thai)
- Bang Lamphu map detail (also in Thai)
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