Khao San Road, Bangkok: the backpacker street near the Grand Palace

What is Khao San Road?

A short street with a long reputation.

The Thai name, Thanon Khao San, is usually read as "milled rice street", a reminder that this was a trading street long before it was a travellers' one. Today it is a strip of guesthouses, bars, massage shops, clothes stalls and travel agents, and the surrounding lanes have filled up the same way. Walk one block away and you are back in an ordinary Bangkok neighbourhood.

Where is Khao San Road, and how do you get there?

In the old town, on the river side of the city.

Khao San Road is in Banglamphu, in the Phra Nakhon District, about 1 km north of the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew. That is its main advantage: the big temples of the old town are within walking distance, which is not the case from Siam or Sukhumvit.

The catch is that no Skytrain or Metro station sits right outside. Most visitors arrive by taxi, by tuk-tuk, or by the river boats on the Chao Phraya, which stop at piers a short walk away. Coming straight from the airport, Suvarnabhumi is east of the city and Khao San is on the far, western side: see our Suvarnabhumi Airport guide for the options.

What you find there

Cheap beds, street food and a lot of noise.

By day, Khao San is a practical base: laundries, money changers, SIM card shops and agencies that sell bus and boat tickets to the islands. Street food carts line the pavement, and pad thai is the classic first meal of many trips. By night, the bars push their tables and speakers into the street and it turns into an open-air party.

The quieter parallel lanes, such as Soi Rambuttri, have the same mix at a lower volume and are often the better place to sleep. For the dishes worth trying, see our guide to Thai food.

When to go

Day and night are two different streets.

Come in the daytime if you want to see the street, shop and eat without the crowds, then walk to the Grand Palace. Come in the evening if the point is the atmosphere: that is when it earns its reputation. Songkran, the Thai New Year, turns Khao San into one of the city's biggest water fights; see our Songkran guide if you plan to be there. For heat and rain month by month, see the Bangkok weather.

What not to expect from Khao San Road

An honest word before you book a room there.

Nor is it the most convenient base for the whole city. Without a train station on the doorstep, trips to the shopping malls of Siam Square or to the Chatuchak weekend market take longer than from a hotel on the Skytrain. Chinatown is closer, further down the old town. To compare neighbourhoods, see our Bangkok destination guide.