BETWEEN KHAO SAN AND LONELY PLANET

Post-modem backpacking has come to be appreciated by Southeast Asian governments as a development tool after the dramatic decrease of package tourist arrivals due to terrorism, diseases and natural disasters since the late 1990s. Special focus has been put on backpacking performance, perception and transformation within the region, where the massing of youthful travellers has been obvious for more than three decades, when the first underground guidebook for independent travellers was published in the 1970s. Special attention has been put on the increasing commercialization (Lonely Planet, guidebook series) and the booming urban infrastructure (Khao San Road, Bangkok) of this "anti-tourist" (?) travel style, which seems to lead a new comfort-, shopping- and fun-oriented backpacker clientele rather than the ideologically-minded anti-consumerism backpackers of the 1980s on well-troden paths across the subcontinent.