Every Hong Kong guide sends you to the markets, and every Hong Kong traveler comes back with the same report: half of them are magic, half of them sell the same plastic ninja swords. The city's market scene is uneven, and knowing which is which saves you a whole evening. Here is my honest ranking after too many trips, starting with the one I would defend in an argument.

Temple Street: the one that matters

Temple Street in Yau Ma Tei wakes up around 6pm and is the reason this list has a ranking at all. Fortune tellers with paper charts under bare bulbs, a Cantonese opera corner where amateurs sing to a circle of regulars, clairvoyant birds, stalls of electronics and tailors' samples, and then, the real draw, the open-air food stalls. Sitting at a plastic table on the street itself, eating clay pot rice while a waiter who has worked there for thirty years patronizes you gently, is Hong Kong compressed into one square meter.

Come after 7pm, eat dinner here, and walk the length of it. Two hours, no ticket, and it changes every time you go.

The Ladies Market: fine, with lowered expectations

Tung Choi Street in Mong Kok, better known as the Ladies Market, runs a daytime-to-evening bazaar of clothing, bags, phone cases and souvenirs a few blocks long. It is genuinely lively and genuinely repetitive. If you enjoy light haggling and need gifts to carry home, it does the job. If you want atmosphere, it is a shopping mall wearing a costume. Go if it is on your walking route through Mong Kok anyway; do not cross the harbor for it.

The specialists, briefly

• Goldfish Market, Tung Choi Street's northern stretch: dozens of tiny shops bagging live fish, plus turtles, insects and terrarium gear. Short, strange, worth a look if you are in Mong Kok.
• Flower Market Road: flower shops wholesale and retail, best in the morning, spectacular before Chinese New Year. It smells wonderful, which no other market here can claim.
• Jade Market, Yau Ma Tei: rows of green stone under tents, ranging from trinkets to pieces you should absolutely not buy without expertise. Come to browse and people-watch, not to invest.
• Stanley Market, on the south side of the island: pleasant half-day trip with the waterfront, but it is more mall than market now.

Two smaller notes before you go. The temple that gives Temple Street its name sits at the southern end, and the fortune-teller row gathers near it, so start there and walk north into the food stalls as they light up. And carry wet wipes, because the clay pot rice comes to the table bubbling and the splash radius is bigger than your dignity.

How to haggle without hating yourself

Haggling is expected in the clothing and souvenir markets, less so at food stalls and the specialist markets. Opening counteroffers of about half the quoted price are normal, and walking away is the most honest form of negotiation; the price usually follows you a few steps. Once money changes hands, the deal is done, so decide before you ask for the price. Keep small notes. And know what the thing costs in a regular shop, because the classic market move is a souvenir priced higher than the store two streets away.

Putting an evening together

My standard Kowloon market evening: MTR to Mong Kok around 5:30, a quick pass through the Goldfish and Ladies Markets while the light lasts, then taxi or two metro stops to Temple Street for 7pm. Dinner at the stalls, then the full walk south to the temple end, and if the night is still going, a drink around Jordan. You will spend more at dinner than in every souvenir stall combined, and you will remember the dinner. That ratio, I think, is the correct way to understand Hong Kong's markets: they are at their best when the goods are irrelevant and the street itself is the product.

Originally published on 71Asia Tours blog.