Chatchai Market

This is a market for shopping, not for browsing. Locals come here for fish, shrimp, shellfish and crab, for mango and papaya and passion fruit, for spices and herbs and flowers to leave at a shrine. Nobody has tidied it up for visitors, which is exactly why it's worth an hour of your morning. Reviewers describe it as bright, crowded and pungent, and they're not complaining.

Go early. Doors open at 05:00 most days and 03:30 on Sundays, and by mid-morning the best of the seafood has moved. Eat while you're there, whether skewers of chicken and seafood from the food stands or mango sticky rice, which comes up again and again in what people write about the place. The dried seafood stalls are worth a slow look even if you're not buying, if only to see how much of it there is.

If you want a polished night market with fairy lights, this isn't that. The aisles are tight, the smell is real, and prices are what locals pay rather than what tourists get quoted.