---
node: spot_bangkok_khao_san_road
type: spot
slug: khao_san_road
destination: dest_bangkok
title: "Khaosan Road"
lead: "Khaosan Road is a 400-metre street in the old city that became the centre of backpacker travel in Asia in the 1980s and has been reinventing itself ever since. It is now as much a Thai night-out street as a foreign one."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_bangkok_khao_san_road.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2016_Bangkok,_Dystrykt_Phra_Nakhon,_Ulica_Khaosan_(08).jpg"
image_author: "Marcin Konsek"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Overview

The name means milled rice — this was a rice market before the guesthouses. Cheap rooms and travel agents made it the place where overland routes were planned before the internet, and the 1996 novel and 2000 film The Beach fixed its reputation abroad. A 2020 redesign widened the pavements and regulated the stalls, and the crowd shifted: on a Saturday night most of the people here are Thai.

## Highlights

Come after nine at night, which is when the street starts, and eat from the carts rather than the bar menus. The quieter parallel streets — Rambuttri especially — have the same food with room to sit. It is fifteen minutes' walk from the Grand Palace, so the old city and the night street are one long day.