Khao San Road, Bangkok, is like and unlike anywhere I have seen.

Many cities and towns all over the world possess a squat, reflected aspect of Khao San, child streets the mother has belly dreamed and spawned around the planet. So, finally arriving here, I feel both that I have known its exact nature since long ago and that I am totally at sea. For Khao San is unquestionably the prime copy, the queen alien, the dreamer rather than the dreamed. Khao San is as unique as all its cloned sub-versions are forgettable. It is, at the most basic level, the area where 99% of the travellers to Bangkok stay. Several streets in a block, uncontrollably mutating more and more grimy looking guesthouses, travel agencies, bars, photo developers, street stalls selling quite possibly everything. Walls drip adverts and hotel signs, young travellers sit on the curb side like the destitute, waiting for their minibus to pick them up. Like so many other tourist streets in Asia, but its scale gives it a character unique. There are so many people! The entire gap year population of the UK is staying here, blonde young heads looking around in not particularly hidden confusion. Millions of backpackers visit Thailand every year - and everyone who flys in probably begins their time in the country on this road.

This has a completely different feel to Chiang Mai. Instead of relaxed older foreign residents and well kempt couples and groups of friends, the word that describes many of the people walking past me here is a word my (rather conservative) friend Ben coined, "stoners". What Ben means, perhaps unfairly, by "stoners" is: 1. Anyone with long hair 2. Definitely anyone with dreadlocks 3. People with some kind of hippy look to their clothing 4. Or with tatoos 5. Or who look as if they might be able to ride a skateboard... There is a sense here of being on the border of a different Thailand, a Thailand about party beaches, slow days in the sun smoking, tablets under the round moon, about escape.

But, really, there are so many people here that definitions escape me. They pick among dubious folk crafts (everything from Chiang Mai is on sale, looking a little more worn from the journey down), they stride wearing clothes from the skimpiest bikinis to preppy American T-shirt and shorts, on some break from / before college, or in both obviously geniune and obviously-acquired-for-the-trip hippy gear. There is a huge amount of cleavage and supposed relaxed self confidence on display, yet no one meets anyone else's eye as we weave through each other. I imagine every person here, if interviewed, would expound how they know this isn't "the real Thailand", how they came to meet the culture, how they think it's all ridiculous and touristy. But we are all still here - the magnetism of such places cannot be underestimated, and Khao San is their heart.

The other thing, aside from scale, that sets Khao San apart is the air of wrong doing. Casually, this is those stalls selling fake ISIC cards and journalist IDs, that my street cafe waitress demands I pay for my drink up front, the oppression of the market traders, something on sale everywhere, and taxi drivers who never give up. That the hilltribe women proffer their wares more like disquieting beggars than village silversmiths.
Is my feeling more than that? As I ate breakfast, three Thai-looking people sat down further along my table. They engaged me in conversation, one told me I had beautiful eyes, I assuming they were travel agents, but no pitch was forthcoming. We talked for a while, they were Filipinos on holiday here. We chatted about the Philippines and the places I wanted to go there. One of them was going to Manchester to be a nurse, but her mother was worried about her, didn't want her to go. "Could you tell something about Manchester"? I began some accounts of what I imagined working in the Manchester NHS would be like - but they wanted something different. "Would you come to our mother's house and reassure her about England"? Hmmm. I asked, "Can we meet in a cafe or restaurant"? No, the mother was sick, I would come to the house for lunch. I wasn't sure about this, got his number and told I'd call him. He was disappointed that I couldn't come today, that I couldn't make an "appointment", but I left.
I walked on, came to a coffee shop. As I sipped by the window, I saw a young blonde English guy get into a conversation with two older Asian people. He shook his head to them, and came into the cafe. As we were the only people in the place, I invited him to join me. He was a little peturbed, "Those two wanted me to visit their sick mother, to reassure her about her daughter visiting England". I told him about my not ten minutes ago experience - his Filipinos and mine hadn't seemed the same people, but I had only vaguely glanced at his conversation, so couldn't be sure. What was going on here, I didn't know.

While I am enjoying casting poisoned aspersions at everyone passing me here, I want to get out of Khao San soon. While it is hilarious to wander the street, I increasingly wonder if by being here too, how much of the joke is on me? There is something really crappy about this area - the food is awful, the cheaper guesthouses look revolting (and some have bed bugs, according to a suffering traveller I met in Chiang Mai). Even its wisdom seems faked. There are just as many bookshops as around Chiang Mai's Thapae Gate, but the Khao San ones' front shelves have all those pseudo philosophy and earnest spiritualism favourites of travellers everywhere: The Dice Man, Zen and the Art of Motorcycles, Carlos Castenada's Mexican sorcery, the Celestine Prophecies. Plus the street corner's "live" tarot reader's stall proclaims a quotation from The Empire Strikes Back. I'm being unfairly harsh, sure some of these autobiographies of Yogis are excellent works, and sure that Yoda has much of value to say on the tarot, but feel the general point stands. Khao San is one of those places that everyone says they don't like, yet by staying here perpetuates. Disliking the feeling I was always being watched by people not willing to look me in the face, feeling on some catwalk where the aim is to seem happy and chilled, I decided I didn't need to be a contributor to this place, and in the evening resolved never to step foot in the street again.

In order to aid me out of backpacker town and around the monster of this city, I bought Nancy Chandler's map/guide of Bangkok. This is a very droll and cartoon colourful artistic map of the city, with zoomed in sections on popular areas. I have the sense I would get on well with Nancy, for while the map mentions the big sites like the Grand Palace, its heart is transparently focused on pointing out interesting streets, old buildings, unusual cafes. It has lots of helpful or funny asides like, "Keep walking here for some old Thai buildings" or "The river isn't really this blue anymore". It is a great guide for a walking exploration, and I have been particularly lucky with the weather. Bangkok is right now nowhere near as hot or humid as many friends had experienced: although rain is regular, this is so immensely better than 40 degree heat and bath tub humidity. Although a return to Bangkok seems inevitable given its position as hub of South East Asia, I may not have this opportunity to explore in relative comfort again.

Daniel, 21 May 2004, Bangkok

PS Apologies to anyone for whom The Dice Man is their favourite book, I haven't read it, so am groundlessly mocking it. It just always seems to be one of those fashionable "alternate wisdom" books in traveller haunts everywhere.