VIE Hotel Bangkok MGallery Collection - Luxury hotel - Khaosan Road

Taking life the casual way has always had an exotic appeal. That is how the fame of Khoasan Road began, back in the 1970s, among world-travelers looking for the shoestring accommodations and eats later brought to the public in some of the most popular travel novels of the decades since then, and a few rather average films. One of the salient capitals of all these stops around the world that were made so famous by these budget travelers is definitely Bangkok and specifically Khoasan Road.

Khoasan Road is a long street of restaurants and bars is the layout of this site. But also contains a number of stalls selling everything from the ubiquitous souvenirs such as T-shirts and exotic patterned loose trousers, to any number of gewgaws including framed taxidermied scorpions, religious images, pocket knives, purses and other accoutrments most notably of the “hippy” fashion sense, to music CD compilations and fake university degrees and journalist identification cards.

There are also, of course the endless rows of pad thai and fried bug carts (yes, for eating), henna tattoos stands and hair-beading shops. The whole scene is framed by continuous music blasting from every bar and restaurant, and this fame is filled with people, people and more people. And so, nowadays, Khoasan Road resembles a 24-hour music festival by day and night, with even more action as the sun goes down and the neon lights go on above the milling masses of tattooed and sandals youths from all over the world.

The fascinating location of Khoasan Road, though, is that it is situated in the heart of the old part of Bangkok,

and runs parallel to the wide Ratchadamnoen Road, a boulevard famous for its immense Democracy monument at one end and the Royal Field, Sanam Luang, where a number of significant ceremonies are held, at the other. It is also in close proximity to the Grand Palace, Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the National Museum and other must-see sights of Bangkok.