Khaosan Road

About this audio guide

This guide to Khaosan Road in Bangkok starts with the city's 1982 bicentennial, when every hotel room downtown was booked and the residents of one quiet rice-market street opened their own doors instead. It follows how a Lonely Planet researcher counted just three guesthouses that year, and how the strip was transformed within six years into a stop for budget travelers passing through on their way somewhere else. Along the way it picks up the writers who later gave the street its reputation, from Susan Orlean to Alex Garland. Listen for how a rice market's old name still clings to a street that no longer sells rice.