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Khaosan Road in Bangkok: Before the pandemic, the tourist masses pushed their way through here
Photo: Adam Dean / DER SPIEGEL
This text begins in Starbucks to the left of Khaosan Road in Bangkok, not far from the Royal Palace and across from the Wat Chana Songkhram temple.
They all used to end up here at one point or another, who once set out in search of adventure in Asia and a bit of excess far away from home.
Starbucks is like taking a short break from the stranger.
The toilets okay.
You can order the Iced Latte with ice cubes, without fear of gastrointestinal tract.
Enough wi-fi for insta.
Air conditioning.
If you're lucky, you can pay with the Raiffeisenbank Schwaben Mitte card.
Nobody is there, but Starbucks is still open.
McDonalds and Burger King, these other halls of reliable orientation in a globalized world, have long been closed, for more than a year.
Nothing left to pick up on Khaosan Road.
Lonely Planet: "Khao San Road is unlike any other road in the world."
"A neon-lit melting pot."
"Where else do you meet backpackers doing a gap year, 75-year-olds who order G & Ts, hippies, hipsters, nerds, package tourists, global nomads?"
The Khaosan Road was a place as if decoupled from the rest of Bangkok, a marked out place for freaking out and breaking boundaries, detached from day and night.
It was once called the entertainment district, but what everyone has always meant is drinking, selfies, a bit of shooting.
That's how it used to be, it's not like that anymore.
The last entry on Khaosan Road on the Lonely Planet website, from August 2020, reads: "Can the most famous backpacker strip in the world survive Covid-19?"
Previously, before the pandemic, 25 million travelers came to Bangkok every year, and a great many of them made their way down Khaosan Road.
Sometimes there were so many, so the memory of visitors, that walking was no longer possible.
Instead of taking one step in front of the next, there was nothing left but to let yourself be pushed on in the vortex of the crowd.
The first tourists came at eight, the last left at eight.
24 hour hotels.
Remmidemmi.
The bars were called "Rocco", "The Cliff", "Yes", "Southeast", "The Secret Service".
Now shutters hang in front of the shop windows like eyelids over tired eyes.
Noon at one, the sky over Bangkok is a gray soup.
Mid-October, that's the time when the rain gradually stops and the damn heat goes away.
Winter will soon be in Thailand.
High season for tourism.
November, December, that was always the best travel time for Germans with cardiovascular disease looking for fun.
In the »Mulligans«, the Irish pub right at the beginning of the street, the entrance is barricaded with a yellow fence, and the pennants from St. Patrick's Day 2019 are still in empty wine bottles.
Next to it hangs a piece of wisdom from the old days on the balcony: "Friends don't let friends go thirsty".
You go through Khaosan Road from front to back, 500 meters, actually a little street.
A great silence.
Nobody is there to make a noise.
The trash cans empty.
ATMs flash hungrily, "all cards welcome".
No prostitutes in the side streets.
The neon signs of the large hotels, bars and establishments still hang over the asphalt, like angling over the empty ocean.
In front of the empty cafés there are a few men and women who offer to braid bright strands of synthetic hair in your hairstyle or to paint henna tattoos: little elephants, mandalas, Mickey mice.
For example, there are the siblings Oat and On, who used to take 10,000 baht, around 250 euros, every evening with their weaving skills, and now 50 baht every two days, that's one euro.
The Bigga Ink Tattoo shop closed.
The »Deejay Coffee Speed Shop« is closed.
In the “Rastafarian One Love Peace Bar” Bryan Adams says, “Please forgive me, I know not what I do”, but nobody can be seen.
In the travel agency next door you could buy tickets for river cruise and dream world tours, for cooking classes, for Thai boxing.
Excess, that's intoxication, that's sweat.
Skin on skin, no more control, no more feeling, feeling everything, letting everything go.
It sounds like something that can't be since the pandemic.
Has Corona killed excess forever?
Small back road.
The pharmacy is open.
In the display there are still the XXL Tigerbalm tins, souvenirs that used to be popular, but today the cardboard packaging has faded from the sun.
The pharmacist, an old man, says: The tourists got ibuprofen, paracetamol and Imodium Akut from him, for all other drugs they had to ask next door.
Next door is the roller shutter downstairs.
At the hotel reception in the Thai Cozy House is Supat, 35 years old, from Cambodia. To the left and right of him are two large, unfilled vending machines. The hotel currently hosts three guests. Supat went to Thailand for work four years ago, his wife lives in Cambodia and so does his son. He used to be on his feet all day, ten, twelve hours, he carried the suitcases of hotel guests, checked in, checked out, checked in, and if someone wanted to take a tour to the palace, he organized everything.
Now he's just sitting around.
He only gets half his salary, he can hardly send any more money home.
Worst of all is boredom.
Supat gave a lot to make it into Thailand.
He graduated from vocational school.
He's had two good years in Bangkok, he says, and two shitty ones.
If it doesn't change by December, he'll go back to Cambodia.
The virus is to blame, he says, but it feels like failure.
Walking up and down Khaosan Road today is like walking through the ruins of a bygone decadence.
And at some point there is no other way than asking yourself the question: do you ever want to go back to that time?
If the Bangkok city administration has its way, the derailments of yore should be over forever.
Khaosan Road was renovated in the corona crisis.
The street has been widened, the sewer system renewed, and dirty tar has turned into slabs of gray granite.
Luxury shops should settle here.
But the reputation of a street doesn't change just because the asphalt is replaced.
The light over the street becomes dim, evening comes.
A beer in the Sky 999 Bar. Sao is behind the counter, in his late forties, her long black hair tied back loosely, she owns the shop.
She has been on Khaosan Road for 25 years.
First it had the Sky 666 Bar, a few hundred meters further down, eight years ago it moved.
New bar. Sky 999. Premium location.
"There's no beer," she says.
That's right.
Alcohol in public is banned in Thailand for pandemic reasons until at least the beginning of December.
Tourists will soon be allowed into the country again without quarantine.
But the incidences in Bangkok remain high, the city is just awakening from a shutdown, and 36 percent of adults in Thailand are fully vaccinated.
Some pubs still serve beer in opaque thermal coffee mugs.
"I'll make you a smoothie," says Sao.
Sao named her son after her bar. Sky, nine years old, shows him in a video on her TikTok account. She says she has friends all over the world. Indians, Australians, Spaniards, they used to come every year. At the beginning of Corona they still wrote sometimes, on Facebook or something, that they should hold out, that they would come back. Sao is still holding out, but the news has stopped.
Sao hands the smoothie over the counter. Pink watermelon, coconut water, crushed ice. On the plastic cup it says: »New Normal«. Sao loved Khaosan Road as it used to be. She had ten employees. She went to bed at three, and by eight she was back in her pub. When everything was full, Sao felt strong. Now she has gray hair. She says they come from the pandemic. Behind the counter there is a bast can the size of a bucket with a sign on it, "Tip Box". "Oozed several times a day," says Sao. Now the savings are gone. Some say that everything will be better again by June 2022. She won't make it that long.
Those who are still there on Khaosan Road, who have not yet hung a "For Sale" sign in front of their shop, could rethink their approach.
Change strategy.
No longer rely on drinking tourism, no longer mourn the old days, but instead offer healthy oatmeals for young Thai people, for example.
Why don't they
Because they are tired.
And because they know that as long as there are people, in the end it was always worth waiting for those who want to freak out again.
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