Bangkok · where the book begins
Khao San Road
Alex Garland’s novel The Beach opens in Bangkok, on Khao San Road. The street is a strip of about 300 metres, long a gathering place for backpackers.
Khaao saan is Thai for milled rice: in the 19th century the street was lined with shops selling it. It became a stop on the hippie trail in the late 1970s, and its first guesthouses went into Lonely Planet’s first Thailand guide in 1982.
The backpacker boom of the 1990s and the film of The Beach made Khao San more mainstream and more expensive.
Garland, then 28, told Asiaweek his book was about backpackers, not about Thailand.
A public street in Banglamphu. It is closed to traffic at night, when it is cooler and the touts have mostly gone home.
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