Memories of Khao San Road

Thailand will always hold a special place in my wanderlusting heart. I was initially immersed in the culture ten years ago, in 2004. Stepping weary eyed off a Royal Jordanian plane after a 12 hour stop over in Amman, I saw Bangkok in all its smog-hazed glory. My previous travel experiences were adventure-filled road trips with mum and dad to Sicily, mum's homeland. Asia was uncharted territory to this just-turned-nineteen-year-old and I'd been persuaded to give it a go.

I remember that first taxi ride on the raised concrete motorway, passing opulent houses set against the background of the slum tower blocks belonging to the poor. The image was a shock, is still a shock. Never had I seen so much poverty.

I wanted to go home and forget the months we'd be spending in this strange country. I was a farang - a foreigner - and I felt it. Twitter was two years away from being founded, and Facebook was in its infancy. The only way to connect with home was by booking a computer for an hour at an internet cafe. We didn't even take phones with us. After all, with no camera to take snapshots, what good was a Nokia 8110 going to do on an island with no signal?

After what seemed like hours, we arrived at our first stop for the night.

Khaosan means 'milled rice'. The road, a stroll away from the Grand Palace, was once a residential street and home to a rice market. During the early eighties a festival was held with the most lavish celebrations at the palace itself. With hotels in the city upping their prices for tourists, backpackers brokered deals with locals to couch surf in their homes, giving the family an income and the tourists a central base to explore. It's now both a backpacker's dream and nightmare rolled into one.



All my pre-holiday googling for hotels was a total waste. We arrived at Khao San Road and chose a soulless room with no windows in a hotel that overlooked the street. We paid the receptionist the equivalent of a few pounds for the night, ignoring the laminated sign warning us prostitutes and ladyboys would be kicked out of the hotel. Traipsing up five flights of stairs, with beads of sweat rolling down our foreheads, we dragged our backpacks into the room. There was no toilet paper, just a hose, but at least we had a bathroom. After an eye-opening few hours exploring, we headed back to the room for some much needed rest. While getting undressed the power cut out, and having no windows (or smartphones with torches) we had to wait it out in the dark.

I'd never felt more of a stranger, yet more at home. And it was in the dark, listening to the melodic sound of Thais talking on the street below, I began to fall in love with Thailand.

Backpackers made it their first stop before travelling north to Chiang Mai, east to Cambodia, and south to paradise. Even those planning to rough it would make a trip to Khao San Road first to ease into Thai life.

There's a line from Alex Garland's book The Beach, which I read years later, that's a perfect description of that first experience. It describes Khao San Road as being a decompression chamber from the West to the East.



Because it has everything, all the comforts, you want from home with the excitement only a foreign country can bring to a dreamer. There's a 7-11 for Lays chips, Boots for medical supplies, Starbucks for a cool iced latte, and Burger King if your stomach can't quite handle the street food. You can get fake IDs no questions asked, buckets of alcohol, fish pedicures, knock-off designer clothes and bags, second hand travel books with dog-eared pages, hand carved jewellery, henna tattoos, real tattoos... anything. The noodles, cooked expertly by seasoned street chefs cost pennies, and the banana roti (with Nutella) can't be missed.

Ten years ago, Khao San Road eased me into Thai traditions and culture. It was here I experienced the Thai people's beaming smile, kindness and warmth, especially after a bad motorbike accident. Where I took a tuk-tuk and had to walk back to the hotel after being taken for a ride (literally) to a Thai jeweller's and stranded. It was where I had my first back-breaking Thai massage, and where I learnt those all-important Thai words sawatdee kah and kop-koon kah.

Now though, ten years after my first visit, Khao Shan is a cliché of chaos. It's a tourist attraction, a one night place. So have a £3 Thai massage. Buy a cocktail served in a Barbie pink plastic bucket. Spend the night together. And leave in the morning quietly.

Like the rest of Thailand, it's not the same as it was a decade ago. For me, though, those memories of transition from fear to integration will always make Khao San Road very special. And I know I'll be back there again, one day.