Khaosan's crazy heart

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This was published 12 years ago

Khaosan's crazy heart

Selling point ... Khaosan Road "is like a shot of tom hum kung, heavy on the chillies".

Selling point ... Khaosan Road "is like a shot of tom hum kung, heavy on the chillies".Credit: AP

Max Anderson returns to the Bangkok backpacker ghetto after 20 years, and finds a different party at full throttle.

'Same same" reads the front of the T-shirt. "But different" reads the back.

Twenty years ago, these were must-have souvenirs from Khaosan Road, Bangkok's notorious backpacker ghetto famed for fleapits and boozy excess.

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The T-shirts are still here and so am I - with my best mate, Green. We've known each other since we were 11 and this is one of our periodic catch-ups, him from London, me from Adelaide. We usually meet somewhere new to both of us (last time it was Oman) but Khaosan Road has some special significance.

In 1990 we were in that warm gulf stream of young itinerant travellers circling the globe. Of course, we put down on "the Khaosan", a place packed with Brits, Aussies and Europeans wearing batik shirts and Kashmiri hats. "Where've y'come from?" and "Where y'heading?" were mainstays of conversation but the main agenda was getting extravagantly wasted.

Today, Green and I are older, wiser, fatter and greyer. Yet we're still looking for the bar that sells the cheapest beer.

Same same but different.

"You know the Thais pronounce it 'Cow'-san not 'Ko'-san," Green calls over the music of the open-fronted Silk bar (which competes with music from the open-fronted Centre bar, which competes with the open-fronted Sabai bar).

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"Good luck with that!" I snort.

"Yeah. Seventy million Thais and they're all wrong," he replies.

I can't keep the grin off my face, even at 1am: the bonkers energy of Khaosan is like a shot of tom yum kung, heavy on the firecracker chillies. The racket, the dazzle of lights, the press of bodies in the narrow corridor of commerce. Everyone's hawking and everyone's buying: beer buckets, smashed fruit-pulp juices, pirated CDs, fake student IDs, woven friendship bands, second-hand books, wooden frogs that go "ricket!" when you stroke their backs. Same same - insanely, wonderfully same same! But different.

We wake at 11am wondering momentarily where the hell we are, to find our Khaosan fleapit is not a fleapit at all. It's a six-storey hostel called the Rikka Inn. The en suite room is clean, airconditioned and decorated with funky photographic art. It cost us just 950 baht a night ($28.50), yet it has a sleek reception on the ground floor and pleasant pool on the roof.

Even under a gauzy sky the pool shoots hot bullets of light and we squint at it cautiously. The sounds of honking streets are muted slightly and a dozen couples recline on sun lounges, oiling their walnut-coloured tans.

And here's another huge difference: I don't understand a word they're saying. If Khaosan Road was once predominantly Anglophonic, it's now properly international. It speaks Chinese, Arabic, every Slavic language east of Prague and the dialects of Latin America. And these people aren't on a trail, they're on holiday. They shoulder responsibilities, not backpacks.

Green and I head out to find a life-reviving all-day breakfast. The restaurants are still selling pancakes (that old backpacker staple) and the menus are still misspelt. But footpath cafes like Sawadee and Thai Courtyard are smarter, and they've spread far beyond the original road. Like a strand of colourful DNA, the Khaosan has replicated itself into the equally colourful but far fresher Rhambuttri Road. We follow its long cordon of pavement tables, courtyard bars, stalls and cut-down Kombi vans selling cocktails. The whole melange is triple the size it was 20 years ago and connected by alleyways such as the adorably named Susie Walking Street.

We take a seat at the Cool Corner Cafe. I order my eggs "pouched". Green has his "screambled".

"Everyone's wired," I observe, "but not in the way they used to be." Green follows my gaze to fellow travellers tip-tapping at laptops.

He, in turn, points out retirees and families with young children, then muses that even though our night went to 5am, we'd seen no alcohol-fuelled carry-on. Just exuberance and good nature.

"Ahh, but there's old school ..." He indicates a wiry old chap with dreadlocks, nursing his first beer of the day.

Next day we walk a kilometre to the broad brown Chao Phraya river and catch a boat south to the central business district. Bangkok is also same same - still backed up like a blocked drain, still hugging the river for some semblance of air and open space.

But it's richer. In fact, it's gone up in the world. There's a SkyTrain on concrete stilts, an airconditioned people-mover that glides usefully over the cramped suburbs and choked roads, stopping at luxury shopping malls. Wealthy people have gone higher still, stacked into super-tall apartment towers that prod the steamy smog.

The SkyTrain drops us close to Jim Thompson's house, a gorgeous teak-wood kampong of aesthetica collected by the American silk grandee who disappeared in 1967. Sure enough he's not here - in fact it's the most soulless home I've ever visited. The man has become an international brand of expensive silk.

"I think I need another beer," Green says.

We escape in a tuk-tuk, relishing again the feeling of going subsonic in a milk crate, stopping at the 250-metre State Tower. Bangkok has gone mad for rooftop bars and Sky Bar is one of the world's highest open-air cocktail lounges. After a 64-floor ascent, our lift opens on waiters who seem intent on steering us with excruciating politeness on to the glass-walled deck. We look down on views one normally needs the capabilities of an aircraft to enjoy and the smoke-stained sunset is magnificent. Green, however, sways noticeably.

"Is it the price of the beer?" I ask.

"No," he says, "I'm terrified of heights."

So we descend six floors to the Breeze bar, which is less edgy but equally plush, an extravagant arrangement of neon-lit gantries and staircases. A liveried hostess points a torch to each step, literally walking us down: "Please mind your step ... please mind your step ... please mind your step." It's fatuous and I want her to stop.

We return to Khaosan Road - and it's home. I'm stunned by this. It was the same - the same same - 22 years ago, our place, a place of favourite bars and fellow travellers.

We repair to the glossy Kombi van stacked with cocktails and I recognise the old-school dreadlocked guy who'd been nursing the morning beer earlier.

"Hello!" I say, though we've never spoken a word before.

"Hello!" he says with the same familiarity. He's French, in his late 50s, and he tells me he's been here most of his life. "I love it!" he says raising his arms, volunteering up the people beneath strings of coloured lights, the lines of folk getting foot massages, the glittering beer buckets and a river of bonhomie.

He understands it. He understands it so much that he needs only two words.

"Where else?" he beams.

It would make a good T-shirt.

Thai Airways flies to Bangkok from Sydney and Melbourne (9hr non-stop) for about $1050 low-season return, including tax; see www.thaiairways.com.

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