Khaosan Road’s Songkran battlezone will be made much larger next year, according to City Hall.
After the backpacker mecca became dangerously overcrowded during the Thai New Year’s holiday, Gov. Chadchart Sittipunt said yesterday that the festival area will be expanded next year beyond the short stretch of Khaosan to the much larger Ratchadamnoen Avenue.
The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration estimates that at least 50,000 people visited Khaosan each of the festival’s three days. The next popular area was Silom Road.
A number of attendees who visited Khaosan on April 13, the first night of celebration, said they felt unsafe and were worried of a Seoul-style crowd crush like that happened in the South Korean capital in the run-up to Halloween in 2022.
Police were forced to close the road to arrivals, and attempted to steer foot traffic in a single direction on the subsequent two nights.
