Local Markets Should Be On Your Travel Itinerary and Here’s Why

Local markets should be on every travel itinerary and here’s why: for food lovers there’s fresh local produce on vivid display, exotic ingredients to get you excited, plus cheap eats, more affordable shopping, and edible souvenirs. Local markets also provide delicious insights into local life, a chance to interact with locals, photo opps galore, and opportunities to get out of your comfort zone.

We’ve been exploring local markets on our travels since we first ventured overseas. Shopping for local produce and local products was also a priority on our 2010 yearlong global grand tour that launched our Grantourismo project dedicated to making travel more meaningful and memorable by travelling more slowly, locally and experientially.

Years before that trip, Mexico City’s markets were the first markets we salivated our way through, gawking at exotic produce and ingredients, perching on stools to devour delicious food – from cocteles de mariscos (seafood cocktails) to cochinita pibil (slow roasted pork) – and buy as much folk art, crafts, clothes, and textiles as I could squeeze into our backpacks.

From that point, we sought out local markets in every city and town in Mexico on that six-week backpacking adventure, from Puebla to Merida, Guanajuato to Oaxaca – where we probably broke some kind of record, slurping down as many licuados (fruit smoothies) as we could contain, which in hindsight probably wasn’t a good idea before what in those days was an interminable 10-hour overnight ride along a tortuous winding mountain road.

Ever since, we’ve made a habit of shopping, drinking and eating our way through markets around the world, savouring fresh tuna at Tokyo’s Tsukiji markets, scoffing down open seafood sandwiches at Scandinavian market halls, sipping frothy micheladas at Mexico’s markets, hugging warming mugs of glühwein at Europe’s Christmas Markets, buying aromatic spices in Istanbul’s Egyptian Market and local coffee and tea at Dalat’s markets in central Vietnam.

And you should seek out local markets when you travel, too, from Asian wet markets to farmers markets and fish markets. But as much as the main appeal of visiting local markets is the mouthwatering food and drinks, there are lots of other reasons to discover markets when you travel, but let’s start with the food.

Local Markets Should Be On Your Travel Itinerary and Here’s Why

Here are some reasons why you should visit local markets when you travel.

Local Markets are a Food Lover’s Paradise

Terence and I have included local markets on our trip itineraries for as long as we’ve travelled, because we love shopping local markets, whether it’s simply for the freshness of the produce or to find hard-to-source ingredients, such as fresh Asian herbs that weren’t available in the supermarkets.

If you’re the same and you’re a food lover and you’re not already seeking out local markets when you travel, then here are five reasons to add fresh food markets, wet markets and farmers markets to your trip itineraries.

For the Fresh Local Produce

I have to confess that as the granddaughter of a market gardener and a farmer, I was spoiled having grown up eating fresh produce plucked from my grandfathers’ backyard veggie gardens. I’ve long been happy just gawking at beautiful farm-fresh produce that smells like it was just-picked rather than having spent weeks in cold storage.

During our years living together in my hometown of Sydney, Terence and I spent many Saturday mornings shopping at Chinatown’s Paddy’s Markets for Asian ingredients for meals he planned to cook that weekend – the vegetables and herbs were fresher as well as being far more affordable than in the supermarkets. And it’s the case everywhere around the world.

When we moved abroad in 1998 to live and work in the Middle East, we continued shopping the local markets for fresh seafood, vegetables, herbs, and spices. While the supermarkets were excellent, nothing compared to shopping the souks, buying seafood that had just been unloaded from a fishing trawler docked nearby, or purchasing bags of heady spices scooped from a hessian sack.

If you’re a lover of inhaling fragrant fresh produce and ogling gorgeous fruit and vegetables, arranged in perfect pyramids stacked on stalls, topped by samples of juicy melons and aromatic oranges sliced in halves to reveal their ripeness, you’re going to be very satisfied visiting local markets for the produce alone.

Tip: if you don’t have a local contact to take you on a market walk to introduce you to the local produce, book a market tour or food tour for your first day in your destination or hire a local guide. We recommend Get Your Guide for food tours and EatWith for booking meals with locals, cooking classes and insider foodie experiences.

Some of the best market tours focused on local produce that we’ve experienced include these tours of Melbourne’s best markets and this Budapest market tour with a food writer. This London foodie tour included Borough Market, this New York culinary history walk took in outdoor markets in Little Italy-Chinatown, and this Istanbul food tour and Paris food tour included markets and speciality shops.

For Cooking Local Food

Shopping local markets and learning to cook local food were high on our to-do list during our 2010 yearlong global grand tour that launched Grantourismo. As we were staying in holiday houses and apartment rentals for two weeks at a time to live like locals and Terence was learning to cook the quintessential dishes of places we settled into, as soon as we arrived in a new city or town we made a beeline for the nearest market.

Even if we hadn’t yet booked cooking classes or connected with local chefs or home cooks who could teach us about the local cuisine and show us how to make local dishes, visiting the markets gave us a good insight into what produce was available and in season, what things cost, and what local shoppers were buying.

We’d make mental notes then start to research the local cuisine, connect with local cooks, chefs and restaurateurs, and, if we were lucky, return to the markets with local experts to get tips on what to buy and cook – as we did with the owner and chef of our favourite Venice restaurant, who shared loads of local knowledge at Venice’s Rialto Markets one morning.

We’d also signed up for cooking classes that included a market tour, as we did in Venice with Countess Enrica Rocca, who began the morning with coffee with the group to discuss what we liked to eat, then we shopped the markets for beautiful fresh produce, deciding what to cook as we shopped, and gaining lots of local market shopping tips in the process.

If, like us, you prefer staying in apartments and holiday rentals and you love to learn to cook local food and cook in the places you’re travelling, then make a beeline to your nearest local market as soon as you arrive in a place, to see what produce is in season and what local cooks are purchasing, even if you’re not going to make dinner on that first night.

Some of the markets we’ve most enjoyed shopping on our travels include our lively local market in Jerez, the open-air market in Ceret that took over our tree-lined street, Vienna’s multicultural Naschmarkt near our apartment rental, and the Marrakech market street right on the doorstep of our riad, the Edinburgh farmers market a short hike away from where we stayed.

Tip: book cooking classes to learn to cook the local food that kick off with a market tour. Some of the best market tours we’ve experienced that have been led by cooking instructors, including this chef-led tour of Luang Prabang markets before a Lao cooking class, a tour of Bangkok’s Klong Toey markets before Cooking with Poo, and Countess Enrica Rocca’s Venice cooking classes that begin with a tour of Rialto Markets.

Exotic Ingredients

You don’t have to be a chef to appreciate unfamiliar ingredients you see in local markets when you travel. We’ve been living in Southeast Asia for 14 years, in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, and have done countless cooking classes that start with a tour of a local market, as much for an introduction to local ingredients as to do some shopping for produce to cook in the class.

While so much produce found across Southeast Asia is familiar to us, we’re still being introduced to ingredients that we’ve never spotted or tasted before, even in Cambodia and our home, Siem Reap, where so many fresh herbs and greens sold in local markets are wild herbs and leaves that have been foraged in villages and forests.

Funnily enough, I spotted something unfamiliar to me at one of our favourite local markets in Siem Reap that was sold at a stall alongside garlic, turmeric, tamarinds, shallots, chillies, and chilli pastes. Sold in small containers I assumed the dark condiment might have been tamarind paste. It turned out to be a traditional medicine and cosmetic. Good thing I asked!

Many self-professed foodies travel for the purpose of trying exotic ingredients and the stranger the better. I almost fell off my chair when I was working on my laptop at the dining table at my mother’s house in Australia recently and mum was in the adjoining living room watching a favourite quiz show. The presenter asked a contestant what she’d do with the money if she won. She said she wanted to go to Cambodia to eat tarantulas!

Crispy fried tarantulas are a favourite local snack in Cambodia and other mainland Southeast Asian countries, as are all sorts of stir-fried insects, from crunchy crickets to buttery silk worms. For exotic food tourists, trying fried insects is a bucket list item to be ticked off – as they are for inventive chefs concerned about sustainability and food security.

Tip: whatever your aim or interest in trying ingredients and food unfamiliar to you – something we highly encourage – it’s important to do so with a sense of wonder, curiosity and respect for the local people and their culinary culture, rather than because that food is strange or weird to you. Because what might be gross to you is delicious to locals and the last thing you want to do is offend.

Affordable Shopping

If you are settling into an apartment rental or holiday house for a while and will be self-catering and cooking local food in your kitchen, the best place to buy local ingredients is at the local market. You’ll generally find fresh local produce and ingredients cheaper at local markets than at supermarkets. Although not all the time…

It’s true that in many poorer places in developing countries there are two prices that are charged for foreigners and locals. Thailand, while well developed, is one such country. Vietnam is another. However, when we lived in Hanoi and Hoi An we found there were three levels of pricing, for foreigners, expats and locals.

When shopping Hoi An markets and buying street food, we noticed that after returning to the same stalls after a few weeks, the prices dropped. For most of our time there we were charged expat prices. But after we befriended some vendors, such as our favourite banh mi makers and the cook of our favourite market noodle stall, prices dropped even further to local prices.

Imported ingredients are also expensive at local markets so if you’re not familiar with what’s grown locally or even regionally and what’s imported from afar you might get the impression that the market is more expensive than the supermarket. For example, if you bought apples in Siem Reap market, which are typically imported from Australia and the USA, instead of locally grown bananas and oranges.

Tips: firstly, as we suggest above, sign up for a market tour, street food tour or a cooking class that begins with a tour of a local market and ask loads of questions, from what produce is grown locally or regionally, what’s in season, what you should cook with particular ingredients, and the prices, and buy things while you’re on the tour.

Secondly, make a beeline for the markets to see what’s available, then head to a supermarket and jot down prices for the same ingredients. That’s what we did in every place we settled into during that yearlong global grand tour that launched Grantourismo in our Price Check series on what things cost.

Then, after noting down supermarket prices, when you return to the local market you’ll know if you’re being charged fair prices or not. If you’re settling in for a while, hire a local guide to accompany you on shopping excursions the first few times. We’ve got more tips to saving money when self-catering here.

Cheap Eats

One of the best things about local markets is the eating. Whether it’s street food, home-cooked food for taking away, or snacks and desserts, market food is often super cheap because the food stalls and mobile vendors are primarily catering to the people who actually work in the markets or workers from nearby buildings.

Visitors to Siem Reap’s Old Market often ask me why there are food stalls selling noodle soups, spring rolls and desserts right in the centre of the market, slap-bang between the wet market section, where seafood and fish is sold, and the stalls selling fruit, vegetables, herbs, and dry goods, from spices to sauces.

It does seem a little odd, but it’s primarily because the people eating at those stalls are other stallholders and workers and owners of local businesses in the centre of Siem Reap. Spend a day in the market and you’ll notice that the kind of food sold at those stalls changes two or three times a day to keep the locals satisfied.

Markets we love for cheap eats are the Outer Market at Tsujiki Markets in Tokyo, where we ate an amazingly affordable and delicious lunch with our guide and local office workers; Barcelona’s markets for everything from stalls with high stools where you can slurp down oysters or proper restaurants attached to the markets; and the street food stalls on the perimeter of Phnom Penh’s Central Market.

Tip: do eat in local markets when you travel – it’s where you’ll find some of the best local food – but do read our guides to how to eat like locals when you travel, eating street food safely when you travel, tips to avoid getting sick when you travel, and tips to eating safely in Cambodia.

Edible Souvenirs

Local markets can often be some of the best places to shop for edible souvenirs depending on their quality, how they’re packaged and the rules of your destination and countries you’re travelling through. Because with countries such as Australia and New Zealand there are very strict rules on what kind of foods you can bring in.

Food in local markets in Asia often aren’t packaged for travelling abroad but I’ve bought ingredients in markets in Europe that are and make brilliant edible souvenirs. For instance, Budapest’s markets sell all sorts of paprika in pretty tins, while the Outer Market at Tsujiki Markets in Tokyo has an abundance of food products and cooking utensils that travel well.

Tip: before you buy edible souvenirs from markets, check what the Customs rules are, and whether you’re even allowed to take those products home or through countries you’re transiting through, and, if you, are check the packaging requirements.

Local Markets Are the Place to Meet Locals

Local markets provide loads of opportunities to meet locals and meeting locals has long been one of the best things about travel for us and one of the reasons we conceived our Grantourismo project back in 2009. One of the aims was to connect with locals in each place we settled into for two weeks at a time to see if those local encounters made our travels more meaningful and more memorable.

So aside from the food, shopping and eating, we love local markets simply for the opportunities they afford to interact with locals in ways that might be challenging otherwise. Terence and I have so many memorable experiences from engaging with locals in markets around the world.

Terence might not have enjoyed getting elbowed by little old ladies nudging their way to the front of a huddle around a stall that had just discounted its prices, but he has delighted in getting advice on what to buy and what was a bargain by little old ladies in languages he didn’t entirely understand. Venice’s Rialto markets were a favourite for this.

Some of my fondest memories of market interactions were in the Navigli neighbourhood when we rented an apartment in Milan one summer while researching and writing up guidebooks. Market stallholders in Italy are mostly very charming, friendly, helpful and generous with tastings and purchases.

They’ll often add additional slices of whatever cheeses or charcuterie that you’re buying to your order and will pass over other wedges and bites of local specialties to try, knowing that you won’t be able to resist ordering more, but also as a gesture of appreciation for your business.

There was one market vendor we returned to again and again that summer in Milan, and after realising that we were staying locally and obviously settling in for a while, the very patient owner started teaching us Italian. Once he realised we were keen to learn, he started slowly repeating the Italian names of products, their weights and prices. It made shopping that market such a joy.

Tip: if you’re settling into a place for a while, do some language classes and ask your instructor to teach you some market shopping vocabulary that covers ingredients, numbers, weights, dishes, and cooking methods, and make learning greetings a priority.

Local Markets Enable Wonderful Insights into Everyday Life

Local markets are a microcosm of a society and shopping local markets will provide you with marvellous insights into the everyday life, culture – and not only culinary culture – traditions, customs, and rituals of a place that you won’t get shopping at a supermarket.

While learning how, when and where locals shop, how people greet each other and how they communicate with each other are the most obvious things you’ll learn, you’ll also learn all sorts of other surprising things about that place, its people and culture – from the importance of an afternoon siesta everywhere from Southeast Asia to South America to the global love of a good gossip.

Local Markets Offer Countless Photo Opportunities

The colours, action, light, and atmosphere at local markets provide brilliant photo opportunities for photographers, amateurs and professionals alike, as you can see from Terence’s images in this post and elsewhere on our site. Despite living in Siem Reap for so many years, we still get a kick out of taking photos at our local markets.

Before you go snapping away, it’s important to stroll through the market first and sus out the situation. Some stallholders and shoppers will gladly smile for cameras, while others will give you a dirty look, especially if they’re busy and you’re getting in the way of paying customers there to spend money.

Tip: Ask for permission before taking photos of market vendors. In some cases, taking photos is not acceptable, especially of Muslim women in some Middle Eastern countries. While you might want a natural photo of a scene taken from afar and can ethically take such a photo, if you’re going to get up close then you need to ask permission and be respectful. Terence has loads of great tips for taking photos of people when you travel.

A Chance to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

One of the best things about local markets, especially wet markets in Asia and sprawling medina markets in Morocco and other Middle Eastern countries, is that they can get you out of your comfort zone like few other experiences and that’s a good thing.

Terence and I will never forget the time we spotted a tour guide escorting two very pale, flustered, red-faced older ladies through Psar Leu, our local market in Siem Reap, and one of our favourite markets in the world, not only in Southeast Asia. No market matches Psar Leu for colour and atmosphere, except perhaps Battambang’s main market.

By the look of the women they’d not long ago landed, and it was a sultry, sticky morning, so the heat and humidity no doubt contributed to their discomfort. But by the look of the woman holding a handkerchief over her mouth who clearly wanted to leave, it was more than that.

Psar Leu is not for the faint-hearted. It’s not unusual to approach a stall selling poultry, to nearly stumble across a cluster of live chickens tied together by their feet, beside stainless steel trays piled with raw pale pink chicken pieces and baskets of eggs.

The women who gut fish on wooden cutting boards on colourful tarps stretched out on the ground might have plastic tubs of eels squirming in water and cages of snakes alongside the gleaming silver fish they’ve laid out. It’s not uncommon to see the same women skinning live frogs.

For those of us who appreciate the freshness of the produce, seeing a man butchering a recently slaughtered whole pig might be a thing of beauty. For others, it might be reason enough to run for the waiting tour bus or tuk tuk and air-conditioned hotel room. Whatever your reaction, you’ll have a tale to tell and will have grown from the experience.