Chiang Mai Weekend Market

The weekend night market in Chiang Mai’s Old City is lovely. Just to make things clear, this isn’t the permanent Night Market which I suppose every tourist in Chiang Mai visits at some point. That one has built-in stalls crammed along a nondescript main road, this one has ad hoc stalls sprawling along the wide thoroughfares of the Old City (pedestrianized when the market is on) and spilling into temple compounds, where many of the prayer halls remain open and people sit outside eating on the grass. There’s a really laid-back atmosphere to the whole place, with absolutely none of the heat or claustrophobia that make Chatuchak a little trying even for a shopping junkie like me.

Plus, prices are great. The same slippers I saw here for 99 baht (as in, the sign said 99 baht so the real price would have been even lower) here were apparently 250 baht when I asked about them a few days later in the Night Market. I made smiley good-humoured attempts to convince the guy to match that price, but he wouldn’t go lower than 180 baht, so I walked away. S$7 is a bit much for slippers which will spend most of their time getting slept on by our 5 driveway cats.

I must admit I was a little more absorbed in SHOPPINGGGG! than committing myself to doing much photography at the market, but here’s what I did get.

I took this from the street surrounded by stalls and shoppers, but only a few metres away all is peaceful.

The market stays open till about midnight, which I guess is a little late for some of its stakeholders.

We passed these guys on the way home, playing chess on the fringes of the market. I don’t know if they actually knew each other or were just bonding through shared shopping avoidance.