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Destinations knownBangkok’s Khao San Road is getting a US$1.6 million makeover to clean up backpacker ghetto

The street in Thailand’s capital is known for being a destination for travellers in Southeast Asia

Its party atmosphere and cheap eats, bars and guest houses were immortalised in 1996 novel The Beach

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Bangkok’s infamous Khao San Road is getting a US$1.6 million makeover. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:30am, 24 Jul 2019Updated: 8:30am, 24 Jul 2019

Khao San Road is ground zero for backpacker culture (if it can be called as much) in Southeast Asia. Immortalised in Alex Garland’s 1996 cult novel, The Beach, which became a critically panned cult film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio (ultimately causing the indefinite closure of Thailand’s Maya Bay last year, but that’s another story), the short street in the centre of the Thai capital, Bangkok, started life as a rice market, towards the end of the 19th century, before becoming the infamous travellers’ ghetto it is today.

In 2000, American journalist Susan Orlean wrote in The New Yorker: “All languages are welcome on Bangkok’s Khao San Road, including Drunkard.” And nothing much has changed in the 19 years since. Tourists, most of them young, many fresh off their first long-haul, discard their inhibitions, control and, sometimes, dignity, as they progress along the 410-metre stretch, trading baht for beer in plastic cups and barbecued insects.

But perhaps not for much longer. According to a July 22 article in the Bangkok Post, city officials have allocated 48 million baht (US$1.6 million) for a five-month revamp of the rough-around-the-edges destination. Work is expected to start in October, and will involve rezoning vendors who peddle their wares along Khao San, raising the road surface to meet the pavements, which will all be repaved with granite, as well as a spot of landscaping. Thailand’s public broadcasting service, Thai PBS, reported that the street’s 240 stall holders will be organised according to what they sell. Static vendors will be permitted to trade from 9am to 9pm while pushcarts selling drinks, fruit and food, a roadside staple in the city, will no longer be allowed to trundle down Khao San.

A range of fried insects for sale at a street food stall on Khao San Road, in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: EPA

The aim of the upgrade, according to Thai PBS, is to turn the “tourist mecca” into a “full-fledged tourist attraction”, although it is not the first attempt at “improving” one of Bangkok’s most visited streets. For much of last year, authorities were all set on “cleaning up” the area, but a failure to consult any of the street’s traders saw plans reach an impasse and proposals pulled.

Presumably, City Hall learned from that mistake and has consulted those with businesses that might be affected. The 48-million-baht investment might sugar the pill, too. But exactly what those who love to let go on Khao San will make of the renewed, repaved road remains to be seen. When Hong Kong’s own backpacker ghetto, Chungking Mansions, was renovated in 2011, the South China Morning Post heralded its transformation from “eyesore to icon”, but in reality its reputation had been sealed by Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 film, Chungking Express, much as Khao San’s character was smudged and set by Garland.