I had booked a hotel a few minutes walk away from Khao San Road. Even twenty five years ago I didn’t stay on the actual road, just in the area. Tim stayed there in the 1980s, in a house that was still occupied by a Thai family who were renting out rooms. I am not sure that that sort of arrangement still exists. I hope not for the sake of the Thai families.

Khao San Road has always had the reputation of being a party street, where westerners get together after their travels to get drunk and party. But nothing prepared me for what it has now become. I remember movie nights and chatting to people over a few singha beers. Granted people more hard core than me might stay up and have a bit of a rave, but I don’t remember a hint of the full on horror that I experienced just walking down the length of the road on this trip.

It was about 9:30pm so the night was young, but I thought I might have gone deaf within a couple of minutes of entering the road. Even with ear protectors in place my hearing would have been at risk. Basically the whole road is now just a massive nightclub. A nasty nightclub. One where you have taken too many bad drugs and are hallucinating nightmares. No wonder young people nowadays eschew drugs and alcohol and cozy up with cats and cocoa if this is what having a good time has become.

On the plus side the nightmare is confined to just that one road. Another road runs parallel to Khao San, which is pretty lively, but nothing like the main strip. The area by the river where we stayed previously is much busier now, but is quite pleasant to hang out and eat a meal on. One more street over and you are back in mainstream Bangkok with little stalls serving food, where Thai people are eating. There is the buzz of the big city, but at a normal decibel level.

Thankfully our hotel was in a very quiet area and was quite old school. It was a big building comprising a number of internally facing floors, allowing drafts to permeate the interior of the building. The only difference from the place where we stayed in 1996 is that we had an attached bathroom and it was more expensive. Personally I prefer the shared bathrooms as the attached ones are generally minuscule and not properly ventilated, but not many places in Bangkok seem to have them now.

We woke up the next morning to bright Thai sunshine and spent the day wandering round the area and recovering from jet lag. The river front park was as we remembered it and we spent our first Thai sunset there, hanging out with other tourists and Thais and watching an open air evening exercise class. As we tucked into the first banana pancake of our trip, we agreed that it was good to be back.