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I didn't step foot on KSR again until 1981 when I was researching the first edition of LP's Thailand guide. I was looking for a cheap place to stay that was near the river, so that I could do all the riverside temples, check out river boat schedules, and so on. This was early 1981, and I found two Chinese Thai hotels on Khao San: Nit Jaroen Suk and another one whose Thai name escapes me at the moment but it's now called the Khao San Palace Hotel. The Nit Jaroen Suk is now called "New Nith Charoen Suk" or something like that. I stayed in one of those hotels every time I passed through Bangkok that year, as the location was perfect for checking out the historic Ko Ratanakosin and Banglamphu districts. These hotels were the only multistorey buildings on KSR at the time, as I recall. Room rates were around 80B a night then.

I didn't see any guesthouses on the street that year, but the LP guide came out in 1982 and in 1983 I returned to Bangkok to work on the second edition. This time around I found that my two Chinese-Thai favourites were full, so I checked out alleys off Khao San and found two guesthouses, Bonny and Top. It seemed to me they were opened in 1982, but it's possible they were there in 1981 and I simply missed them. Anyway I stayed at Bonny a few nights on that visit, and later found a wonderful hotel in an old thick-walled Ratanakosin-era building down an alley on the other side of KSR. It was called Charoen-dee, and it became a favourite of mine for awhile. It closed a few years later but I think the building is still there, behind a row of shophouses on the north side of KSR towards the eastern end of the block.

From 1983 till 1988 or 1989, Khao San Road seemed to add one or two new guesthouses a year. People simply turned their homes into guesthouses. I'm fairly certain it was not because travellers were asking to stay in private homes, but rather that enterprising locals noticed that the two Chinese Thai hotels were full much of the year, so they took it upon themselves to create guesthouses. After Bonny and Top, as I recall, came VIP and 160 Marco Polo, but after that point I begin losing track, especially around 1989 when tourism in Thailand underwent a substantial increase with a Visit Thailand campaign. By around 1990 it seemed like the number of guesthouses in the area had exploded. This is also about the time that the locals begin tearing down the older single-story places and replacing them with modern shophouses and multistory guesthouses and hotels.