Maenam Night Market

This is a village market that happens to be on a vacation island, not a night market built for vacationers. Come for cheap Thai food, fresh produce, clothes and the sort of household bits and pieces people actually buy on a Tuesday. If you want souvenir stalls and a beer garden, Chaweng and Lamai do that better. Maenam does something quieter and, to my mind, more interesting.

Go in the evening. It technically opens at 11:00, but the afternoon is a thin version of itself, with only some stalls up and the heat doing nobody any favors. Once the sun drops, the cooked food comes out and the place fills with locals eating. Weekends are the busiest. My advice is to arrive hungry, walk the whole length once without buying anything, then double back to whatever smelled best. It's a small enough market that this takes minutes rather than an evening, so pair it with dinner and a wander through Mae Nam village.