Malin Night Market in Chiang Mai

Night markets are popular all over Thailand. Chiang Mai has it’s famous night bazaar, which generally spans the area between the Old City and the Ping River. In addition to the Walking Streets, many neighborhoods also have their own night markets.

Today we visited the night market at Malin Plaza, opposite Chiang Mai University. Malin Plaza hosts this market every evening after 6PM, and the minute the stalls open it swarms with hungry universtiy students and locals.

Like all night markets in Thailand, food plays a central role. Malin has several dozen Thai, Japanese and Korean vendors. Need a break from food? You can stroll through the maze of clothing stalls, get your nails done, have a massage and even get a tattoo.

The great thing for us about Malin was that it was less crowded than the night markets more frequented by tourists. This meant that Ava and Kayan could roam around more freely. Unfortunately, after an ice cream sugar high (when Ava taught Kayan how to eat ice cream from a cone), Kayan took his freedom to mean he could lick the plaza floor. Sandeep was so disgusted he stopped eating his tonkatsu. My tempura soba was too delicious so I kept going.

If you visit Chiang Mai, I would recommend going to one of the neighborhood night markets such as Malin or day markets such as Thanin. If you don’t know Thai, it’ll take a lot of signing and guessing, but that’s half the fun.