# The Sunday Walking Street: Chiang Mai's best market

> Every Sunday the old city becomes Chiang Mai's biggest night market — crafts, street food and music from Tha Phae Gate to Wat Phra Singh. How to do it.

There's nowhere we'd rather be on a Sunday evening. Once a week the old city closes its main street to traffic and turns into the **Sunday Walking Street** — Chiang Mai's biggest, best and most atmospheric market. It's a short ride from the house, and it's free to wander for hours.

## What it is

The market runs the length of **Ratchadamnoen Road**, the old city's central spine, from **Tha Phae Gate** all the way to **Wat Phra Singh**. Stalls start setting up around **4–5pm** and it goes strong until **10–11pm**. Come for sunset and stay into the lantern-lit evening — that's when it's at its best.

![The Sunday Walking Street: Chiang Mai's best market](/blog/sunday-walking-street/visual.webp)

## What you'll find

Everything, basically. Local **handicrafts, art, textiles, clothes and souvenirs** from the people who actually make them — this is the place to pick up gifts that aren't tat. Threaded between the stalls are **buskers and traditional performers**, and the side temples open their courtyards as **food gardens**, so you can duck out of the crowd, sit down, and eat under a chedi.

## Eat your way down it

Honestly, come hungry. The Walking Street is a graze: skewers, grilled meats, mango sticky rice, fresh juices, Northern Thai snacks — most things are pocket change (think a whole evening of nibbling for a few hundred baht). It's snacking food rather than sit-down dinners, so if you're craving a proper bowl of something, save room and chase it with [khao soi](/blog/khao-soi-chiang-mai) another day.

## A few tips

- **Go early.** Arrive around 5–6pm and you'll beat the thickest crowds and the heat; by 8pm it's shoulder-to-shoulder (part of the fun, but tiring).
- **Bring cash** in small notes — most stalls don't take cards.
- **Mind your pockets** in the busy stretches, as you would at any packed market.
- **Can't make Sunday?** The smaller [**Saturday Walking Street** on Wua Lai Road, Chiang Mai's silver quarter](/blog/saturday-walking-street), is a lovely, less-hectic alternative.

Then it's home, bags full of things you didn't plan to buy. Recover the next morning with a slow [coffee on your doorstep](/blog/coffee-around-nimman) — you'll have earned it.