Bangkok Khao San Road
Make this your first stop!
The famous Khao San Road was originally a rice market. Khao means rice. Now it is a tourist area but one I quite enjoyed visiting! I loved the vibe there- it’s definitely my type of atmosphere, chill, boho, casual, and full of life!
It's known to be popular with backpackers, and I found it to be full of folks from everywhere, all ages and backgrounds.
I thought it would be much bigger, it doesn't take long at all to walk from one end to another. This was really the first place I visited in Bangkok, and I think it was the perfect place to get my feet wet.
During the day, pretty tame. Food carts and tee-shirts and those silly elephant pants!Tables and chairs set up everywhere outside of the bars ready for you to come and have a Chang- the beer you will see everywhere!
While sitting, be prepared for an onslaught of fairly persistent locals shoving fried scorpions and bracelets with extremely weird sayings (I mean really, really weird), in your face as you sit and people watch.
Sit and listen and you will hear accents from all over, but not American English. We never heard an American accent there. We really only met 2 Americans the entire trip.
No vomiting allowed on Khao San Road!
I saw lots of interesting signs around Bangkok. Fines for a bunch of random things. This one was in the women's bathroom of a bar.
TP Advice!
Here is some advice. In Thailand, you may have to carry some toilet paper! Especially in some of the bars, there was no toilet paper or, the toilet paper might be on a roll all the way outside of the bathroom and you need to grab it on the way in.
At night, it gets a little wilder. It's tame in comparison to some areas, Soi Cowboy is much wilder, but like any place with bars it gets hopping at night and quite crowded.
I really didn't get a good picture of the nightlife. I guess I was too busy having fun! I never take enough pictures when I travel. Gotta work on that…
It is extremely loud late at night. They say don't stay in a hotel or hostel there if you plan to get any sleep! Each bar is competing for your business, which leads me to probably the most annoying thing. Lines of young men and women standing along the street bugging you to come to their bar. So many that they are blocking the way and clogging up the flow of traffic. There were so many, we wondered how much they could even be paid.
At Khao San you can get a very cheap foot massage, right there outside. I’m not one for that type of thing, but I did try it. Your dollar really goes a long way in Bangkok. A 30 minute foot massage was 180 Baht=about 5 US dollars.
I think it’s a pretty good place to buy some souvenirs, especially a Chang shirt, those elephant pants, or a knockoff purse.
If you decide to haggle, they say to be quiet about it, so that others don't hear the deal you got. I was able to get them to come down on the price a few times, But everything there is so cheap anyway, if you don't get a lower price, it's still a good deal. Most items were about 150 Baht, (like T-shirts)which is only about four dollars. Of course they have a range of items, but I found that most things were very, very cheap, including the food and alcohol.
I cannot imagine going to Bangkok and not visiting Khao San Road!
