Khao San Road is a backpacker’s purgatory. A social experiment of the bizarre, in which time stands still and the foreboding mantra “what happens in Khao San stays in Khao San” remains an unceasing yet indeterminate whisper ensnared in the soupy air.
If New York is the city that never sleeps, Khao San is its alleyway equivalent. On a 24-hour basis, the road-wide rave is omnipresent, with suggestions of drugs and licentiousness, bribery and scandal occupying every street corner. A montage of multicultural merrymaking, young explorers from Tokyo, Germany, Switzerland and Australia make up a tableau of ever-changing anonymous personas that wander the streets in search of the best quality pirated DVDs, the cheapest ‘Chanel’ charlatans and the most toxic alcoholic beverages.
Khao San by Daylight
By day, Khao San is a sensory overload in which cliches are both evinced and evicted – a picture paints a thousand words, yet silence will never be golden. The steady cries of “Very cheap price for you!” ricochet through the air, enabling an omniscient observer to effortlessly distinguish between the grateful backpacker newbies and those less civil veterans who have been jaded by experience. An assault on the senses, the dawn aroma is a combination of viscous pollution and sweet banana pancakes. And so the travellers wander through this exotic sideshow, habitually accosted by sidewalk vendors hawking everything from fisherman’s pants to fake IDs and novelty T-shirts bearing any number of crude innuendos. Laden with purchases, they rush frantically into Internet cafes, a sudden burning desire to check their Hotmail accounts having invaded their consciousness. The Thais look on perplexed. Is this obsession with the online realm an epidemic in Western society? Or is it just another side effect of Khao San?
Khao San Nightlife
And all of a sudden the sun has disappeared. Night hits, and the Khao San stereotype is forever perpetuated. Like a plague on traditional culture, the tourists multiply, swarming from their bunk beds to experience the famous night-life that they have read about in their Lonely Planet guidebooks. Cries for cheap priced tuk tuks are replaced by quiet yet distinctive whispers of "ping pong!", the intonation of the promoter suggesting more than the innocent words themselves imply. Yet whilst they may greet such overt suggestions with expressions of disgust, the multicultural backpacker body is seen alternately stumbling into alleyways, puffing on vanilla hookahs or slurping multiple cocktails from street vendors advertising “Very strong cheap drink. No check ID”.
All obey by the aforementioned mantra, a sentiment amplified as the night progresses into dawn: “what happens in Khao San stays in Khao San”.
And so, less picturesque than the beaches of Phi Phi, less heart wrenching than the poverty embracing Surat Thani and less traditional than the bungalows of Samui, Khao San Rd exists in a vacuum that is not so much a slice of Thailand as an artistic rave of cultures and identities melding together to form a travelers purgatory. A social experiment, a sensory overload and an unforgettable adventure.
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