Chaing Mai Sunday Market

We arrived in Chang Mai on Sunday, just in time for the wonderful Chiang Mai Sunday Night Market. The Market takes over the entire main street of the old town, and features a wide variety of the usual jewelry, fans, lamps, souvenirs etc.

And food. I'd heard that the Thais love to eat, but this literally blew me away. The market is home to the most diverse and well executed street food I've yet to encounter on this trip - think London's Borough Market without the gentrification.

Even in a month of Sundays I wouldn't have been able to tackle everything I wanted too. Here's a quickfire machine gun round-up of what I did.

All aboard the good ship omlette. These little banana leaf boats held a precious cargo of egg and slivers of red onion. The omlette was cut into chopstick friendly cubes and nicely salted, if a little cold.

Fried quails eggs take me back to Xi'an. There, they are cooked on skewers then rolled in cumin and chili powder. Here, they simply pop them in a Styrofoam box and sprinkle with pepper and soy sauce. Either way, its hard to find fault in these little mouthfuls of rich yolky goodness.

Fried noodles were cheap, nicely cooked and customisable. The idea is to grab a punnet then feel free to add as much chili, crushed peanuts, soy sauce, beansprouts and green onions as you can handle.


I did and this happened. Although it's not going to win any beauty contests anytime soon, this was a tray of pure awesomeness. Crushed peanuts and noodles is a killer partnership, and those sliced pickled chillies brought a delicious vinegary kick to the table.

The obligatory pork skewer. These ones had been coated with a sweet glaze. By the time I got there they were cold. OK-ish is probably a suitably non-committal way to express my almost complete lack of an opinion.

The styrofoam container it came in probably had more nutritional value than this deep fried chicken skin. Glasgow's deep fried mars bar have nothing on this stuff. I had to stop eating halfway through to give my arteries a fighting chance. I also had to finish the lot.

Street Sushi! There was actually loads of these stalls, with prices ranging from 5 - 10 baht a piece (10-20p.) Not the best sushi in the world, or possibly even Chiang Mai, but a real novelty.

Finally. German sausage and mashed potato. Yet another example of the multiculturalism of Chiang Mai's street food. A little on the pricey side for what you got (around 50p) but a good end to a great wander.