Night Markets in Siem Reap & Angkor Wat
A visual guide from the Siem Reap and Angkor Wat travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
By six in the evening the generators are running and the lanes off Sivatha Boulevard smell of grilled pork skewers and lemongrass. Siem Reap has more night markets per square kilometre than anywhere else in Cambodia — half a dozen within a fifteen-minute walk of the Old Market — and they are not interchangeable. Several sell the same elephant-print trousers and fridge magnets. One or two are genuinely good for craft. And the busiest of the lot, out on Road 60, is a Khmer family carnival that almost no visitor ever finds.
Which market for what
The Angkor Night Market, the town's first, opened in 2007 in a lane off Sivatha and still carries the deepest run of souvenir stalls with a bar in the middle of it. The Art Center Night Market sits on the river's east bank by the footbridge and leans toward silk, silver and paintings. Made in Cambodia Market on King's Road Angkor is the curated one — actual makers, fixed-ish prices, live music, usually from late afternoon. The Noon, Temple and Islands markets fill the blocks behind Pub Street. Road 60, near the ticket centre, is the local one: fairground rides, grilled everything, and food priced in riel.
Buying well
Opening prices on stall goods are typically two to three times what the seller will take, and the bargaining is friendly rather than sport — walk away once and the number usually drops. Dollars are used everywhere with riel given as change below a dollar, so small notes save trouble. The things worth carrying home are Kampot pepper, palm sugar, krama cotton scarves, Sombai infused rice liqueur and silk from Artisans Angkor, whose own workshop shop sets a useful quality benchmark. Skip anything sold as an antique: genuine Angkorian pieces cannot legally leave the country, and the rest is resin.