Chiang Mai Nightlife

Nimmanhaemin Road and its numbered sois, 2 km west of the moat beside Chiang Mai University, are the centre of local nightlife. The crowd is Thai students, young professionals, digital nomads and long-stay expats, and the bars are small: cocktail rooms, Thai craft-beer taprooms, wine bars and open-fronted pubs scattered through Soi 1 to Soi 13, plus the outdoor bars and weekend events in the One Nimman courtyard and the rooftop bars on top of the Maya mall, with views back to Doi Suthep. Most open at 6 or 7pm and are busiest from 9pm to midnight.

Warm Up Cafe, on Nimmanhaemin Road itself, has been the city’s main club for around 20 years: several zones under one roof, usually a live band playing Thai rock in one room, hip-hop or EDM DJs in another, and a garden bar outside. Entry is normally free, drinks are sold by the bottle or the glass, and it is busy from about 10pm until closing. Bring photo ID, since the door checks ages and you must be 20 to drink in Thailand. Dress is casual but neat; flip-flops and vest tops may be turned away on busy nights.

Nimman is a 10-minute, 80 to 150-baht Grab from the Old City. Traffic on Nimman and Huay Kaew roads crawls from 9pm on Friday and Saturday, so walk the last few hundred metres.

Inside the moat, nightlife is concentrated in the north-east corner, where Ratvithi Road meets Ratchaphakhinai. Zoe in Yellow is a block of open-air bars sharing one courtyard and a sound system: 80 to 120-baht beers, buckets and cheap cocktails, a mixed crowd of backpackers, Thai twenty-somethings and expats, and a dance floor that fills from 11pm until it closes around 1am. The bars on the moat road nearby and the small reggae, rock and cocktail bars on the sois around it fill the same hours.

Just north of the moat, Santitham has cheap student bars and noodle shops that stay busy until midnight. The rest of the Old City is quiet at night. Guesthouse bars, a few craft-beer places and rooftop terraces near Tha Phae Gate close around midnight, and the temple lanes are silent by 10pm. If you want a lively evening without leaving the moat, eat at the Sunday Walking Street or Chang Phueak Gate market, then walk to Ratvithi Road.

Loi Kroh Road runs east from the moat to the Night Bazaar. Its first few hundred metres are the city’s old-style beer-bar strip: open-fronted bars with pool tables, hostesses and televised football, aimed at an older male crowd. Prices are reasonable (100 to 140 baht a beer), but hostess drinks (“lady drinks”) cost 150 to 250 baht each and appear on your bill if you buy them. The strip is not dangerous, just not to everyone’s taste.

Further east, the Night Bazaar area is busy until about 11pm with the stalls of Chang Klan Road and the food courts behind it. Boy Blues Bar, at the back of the Kalare Night Bazaar food centre, has played live blues most nights for years and is one of the friendliest places in town for solo travellers. Halal noodle and curry shops around the Ban Ho Mosque stay open for late dinners.

North Gate Jazz Co-op is the best music bar in Chiang Mai: a narrow two-storey bar on the moat opposite Chang Phueak Gate, with local and visiting musicians playing from about 9pm. Entry is free and drinks are cheap; the crowd overflows onto the pavement and listens from the street. Tuesday’s open jam session is the busiest night, when anybody who brings an instrument can sit in.

Down by the Ping River, on Charoen Rat Road on the east bank near Wat Ket, The Riverside Bar and Restaurant has been the classic night out for decades, with two stages, cover bands from about 7pm and tables on the water; The Good View next door works the same way. They are restaurants first, so you can eat dinner and stay for the music, at 200 to 500 baht a head. Several smaller riverside bars along the Riverside host acoustic sets, and Warm Up Cafe in Nimman has a live rock room most nights.

Two stadiums in the centre stage muay thai fight nights for visitors several times a week: Thapae Boxing Stadium, near Tha Phae Gate, and the Loi Kroh Boxing Stadium inside the Loi Kroh bar complex. A typical card runs from about 9pm to 11.30pm with six to eight bouts, from young local fighters to foreign students of the city’s training camps, and often ends with a novelty fight. Tickets cost about 600 baht for standard seats and 1,000 to 1,500 baht ringside; buy at the door or from the trucks that drive around town with loudspeakers, which sometimes include a free ride.

These are entertainment shows, not the big championship cards of Bangkok’s Rajadamnern or Lumpinee stadiums, but the fights are real and the pre-fight wai kru ritual is performed properly. To train rather than watch, Chiang Mai’s gyms offer drop-in classes from about 400 to 600 baht.

• Sunday Walking Street: Ratchadamnoen Road from Tha Phae Gate to Wat Phra Singh, about 4pm to 11pm. The biggest night out of the week, with food courts in the temple grounds.
• Saturday Walking Street: Wualai Road in Wualai, south of Chiang Mai Gate, from about 5pm, with Wat Sri Suphan lit up nearby.
• Night Bazaar: Chang Klan Road nightly, 6pm to 11pm, with the Anusarn and Kalare food courts.
• Chang Phueak Gate night market: nightly from about 5pm at the north gate, best for khao kha moo, noodles and roti after the jazz.
• Kad Na Mor: the student night market by Chiang Mai University’s front gate, cheap clothes and snacks.

All of the walking streets are covered on their own page under Chiang Mai walking streets, and the dishes worth hunting for are in our Chiang Mai food guide.

Restaurants generally stop serving at midnight, bars close around 1am and clubs at 2am; Chiang Mai has a designated entertainment zone where licensed venues may stay open until 4am, but only a handful do. Shops and 7-Elevens sell alcohol only from 11am to 2pm and from 5pm to midnight, and the fridges are locked outside those windows. The legal drinking age is 20.

No alcohol is sold on the main Buddhist holy days (Makha Bucha, Visakha Bucha, Asalha Bucha, Khao Phansa and Ok Phansa) or on election days and the evening before: bars close and the walking streets go dry. Songkran in mid-April turns the moat into a three-day water fight and the bars into street parties, while Yi Peng and Loy Krathong in November bring lantern releases and crowds to Tha Phae Gate and the Nawarat Bridge. Rules on hours change from time to time, so check before you go; the country-wide position is in our Thailand nightlife guide.

Getting home is easy. Grab and Bolt cars and motorbike taxis work all night and show the fare before you book; a ride across town costs 80 to 200 baht. Red songthaews thin out after 10pm, and those still running at 1am expect 100 to 200 baht for a private ride, so agree the price first. Tuk-tuks wait outside the main bars and charge similar fares. Police often set up checkpoints on the moat roads at night to check helmets, licences and breath alcohol, and riding a scooter after drinking is the most common way visitors get hurt in Chiang Mai: do not do it.

Chiang Mai is one of Thailand’s safest cities at night. Watch your drink at the busy bars, check bar bills before paying, keep your phone and wallet zipped at the walking streets, and carry a copy of your passport, as police can ask for ID. Solo women generally find the city easygoing; the usual precautions about walking alone down unlit sois apply. The LGBTQ+ scene is small, friendly and spread across Nimman and the Old City, and the city is relaxed about same-sex couples.