Chiang Mai/Things to do/ food
The Sunday Walking Street
Every Sunday evening the city closes Ratchadamnoen Road from Tha Phae Gate to Wat Phra Singh and fills it with stalls, with a smaller Saturday version on Wua Lai Road.
What we checked, 18 September 2026
Checked on 18 September 2026. Days, hours and streets are from the municipality, which says approximately and whose hours text has not changed since at least 2020, so treat the times as a range rather than a timetable. The municipality cancels individual Sundays by formal notice, for example 11 May 2025, so check its site before a particular weekend. We have not been.
Verified via. Chiang Mai Municipality, which runs both markets, states the Sunday walking street is on Ratchadamnoen Road and Phra Pokklao Road, open only on Sundays at approximately 17:00 to 22:00, and the Saturday walking street on Wua Lai Road near Chiang Mai Gate, open only on Saturdays at approximately the same hours. The municipality suspends individual dates by formal notice. The map point is Tha Phae Gate, where the Sunday market begins, at 18.7878, 98.9933 on OpenStreetMap.
Admission
These are public roads closed to traffic, and nobody reports paying to walk in, but Chiang Mai Municipality's walking-street pages give days, hours and streets without any line about entry either way. So there is no confirmed zero here. Stalls are cash.
On Sunday evenings Chiang Mai Municipality closes Ratchadamnoen Road, from Tha Phae Gate to Wat Phra Singh, and Phra Pokklao Road across it, and hands them over to stalls: food, crafts, clothes, musicians and a great many people. It began on Tha Phae Road in 2002 and moved to Ratchadamnoen in 2004, when the original street was dug up for utility work.
The schedule, in the municipality’s own words. Sundays only, approximately 17:00 to 22:00. The Saturday market runs on Wua Lai Road near Chiang Mai Gate, south of the moat, on Saturdays only at approximately the same hours. Note the word approximately, which is the municipality’s, and note that the same text has been on its site since at least 2020.
It does not happen every Sunday. The municipality cancels individual dates by formal notice, as it did for 11 May 2025, and it has suspended the markets entirely in the past. If your trip has one Sunday in it, check the municipality’s news page that week rather than assume.
How to do it properly. Start at Tha Phae Gate around six before the crowd builds, eat your way west, and step into the temple courtyards along the route, several of which run food courts of their own on market nights. Wat Phra Singh at the far end is a natural finishing point.
What we have not done. Walked it.
Best for
Dinner and a slow walk across the Old City on a Sunday night
Skip if
You dislike crowds. By eight it is shoulder to shoulder from the gate inward
Where it actually is
Ratchadamnoen Road and Phra Pokklao Road, Mueang Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai 50200
Old City, Chiang Mai
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.View larger map
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