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Khao San Road in Bangkok - the trip goes to Thailand

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Thailand is amazing! Read here about my experience of Khao San Road, a famous street in central Bangkok
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Khao San Road in Bangkok - the trip goes to Thailand is written by Line Hansen.

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Khao San Road in Bangkok is a hit for backpackers

The trip goes to Thailand, and all backpackers who have traveled around the country know the street Khao San Road, sometimes just spelled Khaosan Road. This is where you are definitely part of the pack if you wear a Chang beer-tank top or knows how to throw the expression "same same, but different” into appropriate places in your speech stream.

It's Christmas Eve.

We sit on Khao San Road in Bangkok each wearing our Santa hat that Grandma sent with my parents to add a little Christmas spirit under the warm skies.

Along the restaurants in the area around Khao San Road, "Last Christmas" blares from the loudspeakers, and many places are decorated with kitschy cellophane Christmas wreaths.

We replace the traditional roast pork with delicious Thai food. The rice salamander is replaced by pancakes and ice cream. We wash down the glory with mojitos and cold beer. Today is a day like any other, except we're wearing Santa hats and secretly humming along to Wham's Christmas classics.

It's a shame cozy, but also quite silly. Something similar is a long way from home a traditional Christmas Eve, but it does not matter. Many experiences await, and I wonder if it will be Christmas again next year?

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Khao San Road in Bangkok: A Jumble

Although Khao San in Bangkok is only a few hundred meters long, it takes an hour or two to stroll down through the beautiful tangle.

Travel Agents, bars, restaurants, souvenir shops and clothing stalls that dictate the latest backpacker fashion fill the streetscape. Hostels, hotels and guesthouses available in all shades and price ranges. From the windowless dingy ones with bedbug-infested bunk beds and alcohol-marked walls, to the more upgrade accommodation options for the flashpackers.

A spontaneous invention about decorating the too skin-colored body is welcomed in one of the countless tattoo pants - carpe diem!

Rastafarians are busy crocheting dreadlocks onto the heads of the newly arrived backpackers. In the middle of the throng of people, a Thai boxing match or a breakdancing match takes place.

In the same way that you invest in your batik colored sarong here, this is also the place where you shop for false identities. Danish press card, diplomas, driver's license, you name it.

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A lively street

Everywhere you hear: “Misterrr! Madaaam! Footmasaaaage!?”

A seat is taken in one of the deck chairs on the street, after which the callus-infested fullmoonparty-dancing flip-flop bums can receive loving treatment from one of the seasoned Thai masseurs. The 25 kroner a treatment costs is absolutely addictive.

I can't possibly think of anything more satisfying than a round footmassaaaage.

Along the street there are multitudes of food stalls. Freshly prepared pad thai (noodle dish), freshly fried spring rolls, fried rice, fruit shakes, pancakes, ice cream made from coconut and deep-fried creeper, which for cheap money can quickly soothe the travelers cravings.

For ridiculously little money, you can have a sex-on-the-beach or whiskey-cola bucket from one of the small mobile bars. Funnily enough, always to the tune of Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier" and a joint that goes round.

Here travelers meet, share experiences and talk cross-sectionally and most often in the following series of questions. “Where are you from? How long have you been here? Are you on a long trip? Where have you been? Where are you going next? What's your name? Where are you staying?”

All the while there are toasts across nationalities. The atmosphere is fantastic in Khao San Road in Bangkok.

Khao San Road in Bangkok: A first meeting

The vast majority of backpackers lands in Southeast Asia with Bangkok as the first destination on the must-do trip after high school. Half-confused, jet-lagged and a little scared, they arrive at Khao San Road in Bangkok – because that's what you do, after all.

Still relatively clean in clothes, wrists not yet patched up with random cords and bracelets, and no bandages (yet) covering the wounds from crashing the rental scooter. They are often equipped with a backpack that is too heavy and overcrowded, of which the first aid kit takes up more than half of the bag.

The likewise overcrowded top of the backpack restricts the view and thank God, because it can be really overwhelming and scary to dump into this foreign world when the trip goes to Thailand.

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A first time for everything

Because yes, Khao San Road in Bangkok is its own little world in a foreign country.

I myself have struggled with the excessively large backpack and still do, in and of itself, when I am in a new country and have to try to find my way.

And I have made – and am making – many mistakes. My first trip to India in 2006 (with an overcrowded backpack and a first aid kit that filled more than half of the bag), despite several warnings, also made my debut as a backpacker. If you do not want to listen, you have to feel.

Me and my travel partner were definitely scared, and certainly looked at least as scared as the new arrivals in Bangkok! For what cave was this place we had landed?

Credibly, we answered the taxi driver's question that it was our "first time in India" and that we would definitely "like to go to the government-owned tourist information." And how lucky that the driver's brother happens to work there! What a nice and friendly driver! Well, well, okay – three times the normal fare for the taxi. Well, well, if you say so, we'd better pay. Ha, ha - go ahead, take advantage of us, cheat us, take our money and then tell us all the lies you know, because we swallow it raw!

"First time in India" was fortunately not the last. A few years later, we returned with a significantly lighter backpack, a smaller first aid kit, and better equipped to handle India and the accompanying fixes of worst drawer.

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Tourist Mecca and Khao San Road in Bangkok

I have been to the Khao San area quite a few times and thought it was hugely touristy and superficial. Felt unfaithful to the "real" backpacker life. But now I love it! YES, that is full of tourists. Superficial… maybe?

All of us Westerners who have traveled out into the world to "realize ourselves", "find out who we are", meet foreign cultures and experience new countries and peoples up close, crowd here on this exact street. If you want to experience Thailand, you have to stay far away. Khao San has little to do with Thailand. Except for the fresh one pad thai, which is sold from the street.

Only a few locals hang out here, and it's most likely not where you'll find out what you're going to do with the rest of your life. Everything within a radius of 500 meters is obviously adapted to the backpackers' needs and desires.

Everything is possible here - it's just a question of the price. You can even sell your half-used shampoo bottles and worn-out sleeping bag on to the next backpacker. And counterfeit copies of Lonely Planet's guidebooks work on almost equal footing Thai baht as valid currency.

It is a wild thought that a single street over the past 30-40 years has developed from being a rice market to today being a phenomenon that forms the center of backpacker culture in Southeast Asia. If you just take Khao San for what it is and just try to smell this super intense atmosphere, then it is an experience in itself. These 500 meters – jam-packed with expectations and excitement. There are so many experiences to be had, atmospheres to be felt, food to be tasted, night trains to be tried, dreams to be lived and experiences to be had when the trip goes to Thailand.

Hooray for the backer life, hooray for Khao San Road in Bangkok!

Read much more about the trip to Thailand here

Thailand islands travel

When is the best time to travel to Thailand?

  • Bangkok is best to travel to between November and March
  • Chiang Mai is best to travel to between November and March
  • Koh Samui is best to travel to between January and April as well as between June and September
  • Phuket is best to travel to between November and March
  • Hua Hin is best to travel to between November and March
  • Koh Phi Phi is best to travel to between November and February

About the author

Line Hansen

Line started her travel life as a teenager by going on various charter holidays with her friends, which kick-started her desire to travel. Has always been driven by a great longing as well as urge to experience the world, and see what is hiding in other countries. After the teenage years, it has always been with a backpack around and preferably on a "low-budget".

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