Saturday Walking Market

Markets are a big thing here in Chiang Mai. Some cater to locals and others to tourists. Some continually run every day in a designated area and others spring up just on certain days on certain streets. The Saturday Walking Market is popular with both tourists and locals, but I think we saw more of the former there. It runs every Saturday from around 5 pm onward. The city shuts down traffic on over 1 km of Wualai Road, which is located south of the Southern Chiang Mai Gate, for the event. 

We arrived at the market on the early end (closer to 5pm), because we heard it would be less busy then. This was a good suggestion. It wasn't too crowded. We had bought a banana shake to sip on, and we enjoyably meandered our way down the street. On the way we viewed food options, handmade products, and lots of cheap looking mass produced looking stuff. 

Looking at the merchandise while sipping our banana shake

Busy market, but not at it's fully crowded stage yet

Some of the handmade products were especially cool. This market is known for its silver crafts, and we were able to see a craftsman hammering an intricate design into some silver plating. What intrigued us even more was a man selling handmade mandolins and ukuleles. There were beautifully handcrafted locally out of mango and avocado wood. We would have liked to inspect them more, but the thickening crowd was getting uncomfortable. We may be tempted to return earlier next Saturday for a better look. 

We walked until we were tired and then looked for some food. The rows of stalls on the street just didn't seem to end! There were also several streets branching off the main walking street that had more products and most of the available food. Brandon found a delicious meat kabob to nibble on while I searched for mango sticky rice, a traditional Thai dessert that I've been wanting to try from our arrival. I was super excited to secure the dish for just 40 baht and it seemed heaped with more mango than usual. It exceeded my expectations. 

So excited about my mango sticky rice!

By this point it was nearing 7 pm and the market was getting overwhelmingly crowded. We had to fight our way back up the street through opposing foot traffic. On the way we were looking for a lemongrass tea stand and waffle stand that we had seen earlier. I was starting to throw elbows in the crowd due to my annoyance of my personal bubble being invaded when we spotted the stands we were looking for. We secured ourselves some lemongrass tea and a banana batter waffle with chocolate topping. The tea was sweeter than the kind we had loved at Suay Restaurant in Phuket, but it was still pretty good. The banana waffle was amazing once it had cooled down enough to eat. 

Holding tightly to our food we managed to navigate our way through the rest of the crowd and to some open space near the canal. We ate and rested. We had survived! 

Overall, it was a fun experience with the handicrafts to see, people watching, and smorgasbord of food to try. I would go again. But, when we return we are going earlier and leaving earlier to avoid the hot, sweaty, claustrophobic trap of a giant crowd.