68
TRAVEL CULTURE
where similar establishments quickly
sprouted.
After the movie adaptation of
The
Beach
hit theaters worldwide in 1999,
the neighborhood was pushed into
the mainstream. These days, travelers
making return trips to Khao San Road
are typically surprised at howmuch
their old stomping ground has changed
over the years.
“Amazing… I can barely recognize
this place,” says Hans, a Dutch national
whose last visit to Bangkok was back in
the early ’90s. “Tourists are big business
now… even the guesthouse I used to stay
in has been taken over by a hotel!”
Indeed, the Khao San Road of today
caters to more affluent travelers.
Whereas Hans used to spend his
days on the sidewalk swapping
stories with fellow globetrotters, his
new-millennium counterparts enjoy
decidedly comfier surrounds, sending
status updates via their mobile phones
while sipping an espresso or a beer.
Back in the day, there was only one
internet café here; now there are
dozens to go with the area’s countless
bars, restaurants and travel agencies
(most hotels now boast in-house spas).
Needless to say, the few guesthouses
that remain are a dying breed.
Despite the upscale trend, Khao San
still proudly brandishes its backpacker-
ghetto “credentials”. Symbols of the
golden age remain in the form of the
beads, native pants and bracelets —
trophies which once stood for the
hippie-wanderer experience — that are
now sold cheaply by the roadside. For
just a few dozen
baht
, visitors can adopt
the ever-popular braided-hair look. And
though the second-hand bookshops still
buy and sell dog-eared guidebooks, shelf
space is now devoted to more up-to-
the-minute offerings like
Farang: The
Intrepid Traveler’s Magazine.
Such changes highlight Khao San
Road’s transformation from a budget
hideout to a bona-fide tourist attraction
— there are now even package tours
offering a “Khao San Road experience”.
“It’s a crossroad for Southeast Asian
travelers,” says an American tourist on a
much-belated return visit to Bangkok.
“It was my old haunt back in my hippie
days but it’s so commercialized now
it’s almost like a theme park.”
That might be the case but the
travelers keep on coming — via
bus, taxi or
tuk-tuk
, their bags fully
loaded and their minds packed
with plans to tour the rest of the
continent. Today’s clean-cut, credit-
card-toting backpackers may bear
little resemblance to their unkempt,
virtually penniless forebears, yet it
seems they’re possessed by the same
spirit of adventure and self-discovery.
Maybe it isn’t the cheap lodgings that
lure them to Khao San. Maybe it’s
the desire to experience the freedom
— from responsibility, convention,
authority — and romance
of that immersive, improvise-as-you-
go, care-free approach to travel that
their predecessors knew so well.
In the pre-internet era, secondhand bookstores
served as venues for road warriors to swap
books and travel information
