Said to be Phuket’s largest market, Naka is a weekend market that only opens on Saturdays and Sundays from 4pm to 10pm (or 11pm, according to some sources). Since it was situated within the vicinity of Chillva Market where my husband and I were, we decided to drop by to check it out.
It was indeed much bigger in size with a lot more stalls than Chillva Market! However, the retail stalls were selling pretty much the same mass-produced items. The indoor portion of the market reminded me a little of Bangkok’s Chatuchak Market many years back, with its labelled alleyways and highly repetitive items on sale.
On the other hand, the variety of food options available was impressive! You can find classic Thai street food like pork leg rice, papaya salads and curries, as well as sushi, seafood, breads, cakes, kebabs, grilled skewers and many more.
In terms of ambience, it was unfortunately slightly unpleasant as the walkways between food stalls couldn’t accommodate the sheer number of visitors. If we stopped to queue up or see what a stall had to offer, we would get shoved and squeezed by the immense crowds. Plus there wasn’t much seating space anywhere to sit down and dine properly.
But one thing I was thankful for was the fact that it didn’t have swarms of icky moths and flies despite having similar light bulbs to that in Chillva Market, so it was a comfortable experience even at night.
We didn’t buy much food as we were quite satiated from our run at Chillva Market (we should have paced ourselves lol) but the range and choices here were really tempting. All we got was a small bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice (THB12) that was super refreshing! It took us about 1.5 hours to explore most of the market but I suspect it would’ve been longer had we eaten too.
There were also live performances at two different stages. A young lady on the electric guitar completely wowed the crowd with her rendition of Welcome To The Jungle by Guns N’ Roses!
My overall rating of the experience: 4 out of 5 stars. It was entirely my bad for planning to come here right after we visited Chillva Market as we had no tummy space left to try the tantalizing plethora of food options here! I guess the large crowds were a testament to how popular this market is, although it wasn’t the most pleasant experience bumping into and rubbing shoulders with them. It might be a better idea to come here for the food and drinks instead of the shopping as a lot of the stalls were basically selling the same goods. I certainly hope to get the chance to visit again, this time with an empty stomach 😛
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