Luang Prabang Night Market

The Night market is one of Luang Prabang’s highlights. It’s something not to be missed when visiting this award wining city. It offers the most extensive collection of handicrafts in the country.

The market is located along Sisavangvong Road from the Royal Palace Museum. Every evening a kilometre-long stretch of road is closed to vehicle traffic and turned into a walking and shopping street while the market takes place from 5pm to about 10pm.

Around 300 handicraft vendors sell their hand-made products here every night. An extensive variety of handicrafts made by local ethnic groups are the main products on display here. You’ll find different designed textiles, exquisite ceramics, antiques, paintings, coffee and tea, quilts, shoes, silver, bags, bamboo lamps of different shades and sizes, and even rare spices.

There are a lot of interesting items on display at the night market that are hard to find elsewhere. Best of all they are cheap.

Provided that most of the items sold here are hand made, the prices they quote are quite low. So even if you're not good at bargaining, you can be sure that you will get good value. However, if you want to bargain just for fun go ahead, though don't expect huge discounts.

Shopping fans will be pleased to know that they are also helping the local people when they spend their money. Buying stuff here will contribute to helping the poor to get out of poverty. The traders and the local families who produce the goods will be the ones who directly get the benefits from your spending at the market.

For those who are not into shopping, just wandering around inspecting or chatting with the local vendors will add to your Lao cultural experience. Most traders are quite chatty so if you ask about their merchandise most will be happy and cheerfully accommodate your query. What most shoppers like about the traders here (as well as in Laos as a whole) is that they are not pushy, so don’t worry that you will be pushed to buy things if you don’t want to.

Most local traders in the Luang Prabang night market speak little English, enough to negotiate prices but if things get complicated they will use calculator as a visual aid to quote the prices.

Taking a walk through the night market is an enjoyable experience in itself. It is not unusual to lose track of time while you stroll amongst the stalls. In fact if you look around, you will see many tourists moving slowly, seemingly transfixed while enjoying their shopping.