12 Best Bangkok Night Markets for Street Food

Bangkok night markets offer everything from street food and vintage shopping to dinner by the river. Head to Yaowarat for food, Srinakarin for vintage finds or Asiatique for a riverside evening. This guide from Style Travel explores 12 places to visit, what to eat and how to choose a stop that fits your plans.

12 best night markets in Bangkok to visit tonight

Markets in this city are not interchangeable. One is built for eating, another for secondhand denim, another for a quiet family dinner by the river, and picking the wrong one costs you an evening and a taxi fare. The list below starts with the markets you can reach on the train and ends with the suburban ones worth a Grab ride, and night markets belong on any shortlist of things to do in bangkok alongside the temples and the river.

Jodd Fairs Ratchada night market in Bangkok

If you only have one free evening, go here. Jodd Fairs trades nightly on Ratchadaphisek Road, a few minutes from MRT Thailand Cultural Centre, and it does the three things visitors want in one lot: hot food, cheap clothes, and somewhere to sit with a beer.

The food aisles are the reason it is busy. Leng saap, a chilli heavy pork spine dish stacked into a tower and known to visitors as volcanic pork ribs, made its name at this market, and the grilled seafood counters nearby are worth the queue.

Train Night Market Ratchada

Train Night Market trades behind the Esplanade on the same MRT stop, which means you can walk between the two in a single night. What you come for is the look of the place, those rows of coloured tents seen from the car park above, and the back row of container bars where a band usually plays.

Shopping is secondhand denim, band shirts, trainers and small antiques rather than fridge magnets. It is also the better of the two Ratchada markets for sitting down properly, since the bars here have real tables instead of plastic stools on gravel.

Talad Rot Fai Srinakarin

This is the original train market and still the serious one for vintage trade, tucked behind Seacon Square in the east of the city and open Thursday to Sunday only. The warehouse section is the draw: restored furniture, enamel signs, model cars, old cameras, mid century homeware that dealers come for rather than tourists.

Getting there is the catch. The Yellow Line monorail puts you in the area and a short taxi finishes the job, so allow extra time both ways. Collectors tell you it is worth the trek. Casual browsers are usually happier staying at Ratchada.

Chatuchak Friday night market

Everyone knows Chatuchak as a weekend daytime maze. The Friday night session is a different trade altogether, aimed at buyers stocking shops, and prices drop sharply once you take several pieces of the same item.

Yaowarat for Chinatown street food

Yaowarat is not a market with a gate. It is a road that turns into one. The shophouse shutters come down in the early evening, carts and folding tables claim the pavement, and the whole street starts smelling of charcoal, fish sauce and caramelising sugar.

This is the best eating on the list, and not by a small margin. Many of the stalls are run by families who have cooked one dish for decades, which is a kind of expertise you cannot build into a food court. MRT Wat Mangkon opens straight onto it, so it is also the easiest serious food destination to reach without a taxi.

Asiatique The Riverfront

Asiatique occupies old warehouses on the Chao Phraya and is easily the most comfortable of the bangkok night markets. Flat paved walkways, restaurants with air conditioning and table service, a Ferris wheel on the waterfront, and a breeze that the inland markets simply do not get.

Half the pleasure is the arrival. Take the BTS to Saphan Taksin and the free shuttle boat from Sathorn pier as the light goes. Prices run higher than a street market, which buys you seating, clean toilets and somewhere to put a pushchair.

Pratunam and Palladium night market

Pratunam is the garment district, so the evening trade around Pratunam Market and the Palladium forecourt is about clothing volume rather than dinner. Shirts, dresses, shoes and bags go for prices that fall again when you buy in threes and fives.

Quality varies piece by piece here, so spend a minute before you pay:

• Check the seams and the zip, since nothing is coming back once money changes hands
• Try sizing on, because cuts run small by Western standards
• Compare two or three stalls before buying, as the same item often appears at different prices within fifty metres

Khao San Road

Khao San is the backpacker artery, and after dark it works as a market, a bar strip and a street performance at the same time. Carts sell pad thai, massage shops stay open late, the bars point their speakers at the pavement, and nobody seems to be going to bed.

Treat it as nightlife with shopping attached rather than a food destination. For one loud evening of cheap drinks and strangers from everywhere, no other bangkok night market area competes, and it is still where most guides to nightlife at Thailand begin.

Chang Chui Plane Night Market

Chang Chui on Sirindhorn Road is a creative park with a decommissioned aeroplane parked in the middle of it, surrounded by design studios, recycled material sculpture and independent food stalls. The crowd skews young and local.

It closes one day a week and no rail line runs close, so check the day and book a Grab both ways. Go for the design and the photographs. Dinner here is a bonus, not the point.

Liab Duan Night Market, Ramintra

Ask a Bangkok resident where they actually eat and this is a name that comes up. Liab Duan sprawls along Pradit Manutham Road under tarpaulins, with grilled meat, som tam, noodle stalls and long tables of people drinking beer at suburban prices rather than tourist ones.

A second branch now trades at DanNeramit, in front of the fairytale castle that used to host Jodd Fairs, which gives that Thailand Bangkok night market a backdrop nowhere else can match. Neither site sits near a station, so a Grab ride is simply part of the plan.

Save One Go Night Market Bangna

The Bangna branch sits beside MRT Si Iam on the Yellow Line, which makes it the most reachable of the genuinely local food markets. Rice plates, grilled skewers, fried snacks, fruit drinks, neighbourhood prices, very little English and almost no shopping. If you want to eat the way a Bangkok suburb eats without committing to a long taxi ride, start here.

Indy Market Dao Khanong

Indy Market built its following on the Thonburi side of the river, and the original branch still feels residential: students and families working through fried chicken, filled buns and desserts while someone plays guitar on a small stage.

Prices are about as low as they go in this city, and the crowd is almost entirely Thai. Take a Grab, since the rail network does not come close.

What to eat at Bangkok’s night markets ?

The trick at a night market in Bangkok is to stop thinking in meals. Order in rounds, share everything, and keep moving between stalls, because each one usually does a single dish properly and nothing else. It is also the cheapest way to work through a shortlist of the best Thailand food in one evening.

Grills seafood and shared plates

• Grilled pork or chicken skewers, sold by the stick and eaten on your feet
• Whole fish packed in salt and cooked over charcoal, served with a sharp chilli dip
• Prawns, squid and scallops grilled to order at the seafood counters
• Leng saap, chilli soaked pork spine, which defeats one person and suits four

Noodles rice dishes and snacks

• Pad thai and pad see ew, out of the wok in under two minutes
• Khao gaeng, rice with curries ladled over the top from a row of trays
• Som tam, green papaya salad, where it pays to state your chilli tolerance clearly and then halve it
• Khanom krok, coconut griddle cakes handed over hot in a paper tray

Thai desserts and drinks

Dessert stalls cluster near the exits, which is good planning on their part. Mango with sticky rice and coconut cream is the one to try first, grilled bananas and coconut ice cream in a soft bun comes a close second, and Thai iced tea or a fresh fruit shake does more for the heat than water does. If you order beer, expect ice in the glass. That is how it is drunk here, and in this climate it makes sense.

Bangkok night market FAQs

Which is the best night market in Bangkok for first time visitors

Jodd Fairs Ratchada, because it covers food, drinks and shopping and sits on the MRT. If eating matters more to you than shopping, go to Yaowarat instead and skip the shopping entirely.

Are Bangkok night markets open every night

Many are, including Jodd Fairs Ratchada, Train Night Market Ratchada, Yaowarat and Asiatique. Others keep fixed days, so Talad Rot Fai Srinakarin runs Thursday to Sunday, the Chatuchak wholesale session is a Friday night affair, and Chang Chui closes once a week. Check before you travel across town for one.

Should you visit a floating market or a night market in Bangkok

Do both, since they show opposite halves of the same trading culture. A floating market thailand trip puts you in a long tail boat among produce vendors while the air is still cool and wraps up by lunchtime, then the night market picks the day back up after sunset.

Are Bangkok night markets suitable for families

Asiatique The Riverfront is the easy answer, with flat paths, seating and restaurants you can retreat into when it gets too warm. Street markets such as Yaowarat are more rewarding and much less forgiving, so if you take children there, go early in the evening and keep it short.

Plan your Bangkok night market evenings with Style Travel

Three decisions make or break a market night. Pick the market that matches what you want from the evening, arrive early enough to beat the crush, and check it is still trading before you set off. Jodd Fairs Ratchada handles most briefs, Yaowarat wins on food, Asiatique suits families, and Liab Duan shows you how the city really eats.

If you would rather not work that out alone, Style Travel arranges private transfers, local guides and tailor made holidays with room for the markets as well as the temples and everything else on the list of things to do in Thailand. Tell us how you like to travel and we will build the evenings around it.