Xom Moi market Nha Trang

Xóm Mới market is at 49 Ngô Gia Tự, about a kilometre from the tourist quarter, and it is the market Nha Trang shops at in the morning rather than one aimed at visitors. Open 06:00 to 17:00, and like any working market the best of it is 06:00–09:00: freshest, busiest, loudest. By early afternoon many stalls have packed up.

This is a place to look at more than to buy from, which takes nothing away from it. It holds what a working market holds: live chickens stacked in wire crates, prawns and fish on coloured plastic trays, baskets of snails, dried squid, seasonal vegetables, sacks of rice, and fruit heaped on the concrete. A blue-and-white arched gateway is lettered CHỢ XÓM MỚI, and that is the easiest thing to navigate to.

If you do want to buy, three things. One, the prices here are the real ones, below Đầm market and well below the night market. But still ask first, because nothing is labelled. Two, bring small notes: most stalls do not take transfers, and a large note sends the seller off to find change. Three, this is not where you buy things to fly home with: the fresh goods will not travel, and for dry goods the speciality shops pack them properly.

Nha Trang's markets divide the work clearly, and knowing that saves a wasted trip. Xóm Mới is the neighbourhood market, for looking and for the day's food. **Đầm** is the central one, with a dried-goods section aimed at visitors. **Hòn Rớ** is the seafood wholesale market, at its liveliest when the boats land before dawn. The night market on Trần Phú is not a market in this sense at all. It is a souvenir street.