Bangkok, South­east Asia’s Sin City and at it’s trav­el­lers heart you find Khao San Road, where you can see and hear it all. Lan­guages and people from all over the world.

This little 300 meter stretch of west­ern back­packer heaven is not part of Thai­l­and proper. It seems to fol­low it’s own rules. There is the Eng­lish trav­el­ler, newly arrived, red eyed and jet lagged, with hopes to fol­low in the steps of Alex Garland’s char­ac­ter Richard.

There are well-off thai couples, tour­ists them­selves in this part of their town, walk­ing up and down the road observing the crazi­ness around them with huge eyes and shak­ing their head from time to time.

Old hip­pies, who still remem­ber the old days smoking dope with some Khan in Afgh­anistan, mar­vel at the trans­form­a­tion of Bangkok these last 20 years.

Little skinny Thai girls from Isaan in ridicu­lously high heeled shoes walk around imit­at­ing a stork stork and hop­ing to make the catch of their life, some naïve west­ern tour­ist who will elev­ate their status from whore to respec­ted Thai woman with lots of money. Love is a very west­ern thing and these girls yearn to live their own Asian ver­sion of it.

Beau­ti­ful Israeli girls, fresh out of the army and glad to get away from their tanks, finally able again to wear some lip­stick strut up and down hop­ing to get laid.

Ger­man guys, very self con­scious of them­selves and of what all the other tour­ist think of them, walk past you, their arm pro­tect­ively draped around their Thai love of their two week holiday.

Thai blokes at the top of their game, grabbing hold of west­ern trav­el­lers and try­ing to steer them to their stalls, where you can buy everything from uni­ver­sity dip­lo­mas to pir­ated DVDs to ganja and women.

Sikhs in black turbans tell you bits of your past to make you curi­ous, just so they can charge you a for­tune to tell you your future.

Scores of blind people walk up and down, singing to the crowds in the hope to make a few Baht now and then.

Japan­ese back­pack­ers, glad to get out of the strict con­fines of their home cul­ture, decide to make the best of it and live crazily before hav­ing to return to uni­ver­sity or work.

Thai police, big guns strapped to their waists and always wear­ing shirts that are one num­ber too small, lean on the back of their police pick-ups, observe the going ons with fake dis­dain and ima­gine them­selves the kings of this little stretch of road.

Nor­mal tour­ists walk past to see how the other half, the poor back­packer half, is doing. Hav­ing heard so much about this one road made them leave their con­fined lux­ury hotels for one even­ing just so they can say they have been there.

Khao San Road is a cir­cus, plain and simple, well worth hav­ing a look at and best sampled from the side­lines with a beer in one hand and a couple of bbqed chicken hearts and liv­ers in the other. Relax and kick back on the side­walk, watch the world pass by and make up stor­ies about the people you see…