Thwe was born in Pekon (Phekhon, Pekong, Pecong, Pékon), the only Christianized (Catholic) town in Buddhist Burma. He is the eldest of six sons and five daughters. His father died in 1996 in Thailand.

By a chance encounter with Dr. John Casey, a Cambridge don, Khoo Thwe was rescued from the jungles of Burma where he and other student refugees were fighting Burmese soldiers for independence. In 1991 Khoo Thwe enrolled in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he received his BA in English literature in 1995. Khoo Thwe's autobiographical book "From the Land of Green Ghosts" was published by Harper-Collins in 2002. He currently resides in London.