We wouldn’t be true foodies if we didn’t visit every night market on the planet. Hence, in our search for the most unusual food in Vancouver we were told to visit the Richmond Night Market.
Since we have young children we decided to head out to the market while there was still sunlight, approximately 7:00pm on a Friday night, just when it opened. Upon arrival, the parking lot was almost filled and the lines were already beginning to form…you could feel the energy of the evening building up to something spectacular.
Children under 10 are free and general admission is $3.25, but the line was so long we didn’t want to wait and paid for a Zoom Pass ($20) just to skip the line. This was the first time we ever paid to enter a night market but because it looked more like a carnival than a night market I expected there to be some sort of fee.
The place is like your local Chinatown but in a festival/carnival format. You can shop for inexpensive goods from China like socks, hair accessories or even cell phones and shirts and then head over to the food vendors for dim sum and bubble tea. There’s so much to see and do you can easily spend a lot of money and time here.
Looking for some grub we walked straight over to the food vendors to try to find something to eat. There’s so many different types of food to choose from it was almost overwhelming. They have your typical “carnival food” and then all these wonderful ethnic cuisines as well. After choosing our favorites and stuffing ourselves we headed to the carnival area and played a few games.
We stayed for a good 2 hours before the kids got tired and wanted to head back to the hotel. Even as we left the lines to enter the market were still long and people still parking and walking in.
It was really incredible to see the amount of people out on the Friday night.
The Richmond Night Market is open every weekend, a must do when visiting Vancouver.