Getting Home Late from Temple Street Night Market
By 9pm the market is in its busiest hour and the trains are still running for hours. The licensed Temple Street pitches stop trading at 11pm, the street stays closed to cars until midnight, and the last trains leave the two stations either side of the market after midnight — Jordan's last departure is 01:01 and Yau Ma Tei's is 01:03. If you stay past that, an overnight bus runs the length of Nathan Road and a metered taxi starts at HK$29.
This page covers the trip home only. To plan the visit itself, start with the how to get here guide, the opening hours page, the map and the food guide.
How late can you stay?
Three different clocks run on Temple Street, and only one of them is the market:
- The hawker pitches: 2:00pm to 11:00pm. That is the licensed trading window the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department prints for the Temple Street Hawker Area, and it is the market's real closing time.
- The car-free street: 2:00pm to midnight. The Transport Department's part-time pedestrian street runs an hour longer than the licence, so that last hour is a street people walk down more than a market they buy from. From midnight the restriction lifts and the street is open to vehicles again.
- The eating places: their own hours. Shops and restaurants on and around the street are licensed separately from the hawker pitches, so the 11pm window does not bind them; the licensing plan covers the pitches, not the shopfronts.
So a 9pm arrival is early enough to shop and eat, half past ten is a normal dinner, and after 11pm you are still on a busy, lit, car-free street — just not in a market that is still trading. No single closing hour is published for the whole street.
The last trains from Jordan and Yau Ma Tei
Jordan, Exit A, serves the market's south end at Jordan Road and Yau Ma Tei, Exit C, the north end at Man Ming Lane. Both are on the Tsuen Wan line, and both are quick: MTR's own neighbourhood guide puts the middle of the street about three to four minutes on foot from each.
Last trains and the latest you can board
| Station and exit | Last train towards Central | Last train towards Tsuen Wan | Latest through the gates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jordan, Exit A (south end) | 00:52 | 01:01 | 00:47 towards Central 00:56 towards Tsuen Wan |
| Yau Ma Tei, Exit C (north end) | 00:50 | 01:03 | 00:45 towards Central 00:58 towards Tsuen Wan |
| Mong Kok, two stops away, for a two-market evening | 00:48 | 01:05 | 00:43 towards Central 01:00 towards Tsuen Wan |
The gates rule is the part people get caught by. MTR's own note says that a passenger may not pass through the entry gates less than five minutes before the scheduled departure time of the last train, and the right-hand column above is that rule applied. Turning up at 00:50 for Jordan's 00:52 is not a connection; it is a missed train.
Two details worth knowing on the walk. Jordan's Exit A is a stairs-only exit — the government's 2022 list of MTR exits served by stairs alone names Jordan's A and B2 — while Yau Ma Tei's Exit C is step-free, so the north end is the easier one with a case or a pushchair. And the stations shut shortly after the last departure: MTR lists Jordan's opening hours as 5:53am to 1:11am and Yau Ma Tei's as 5:51am to 1:14am, so there is no later fallback at the station itself.
The times are the same on every day of the week on this timetable, and MTR can change them without notice. Check the MTR station service hours page on the day you travel. The figures above were checked on 27 October 2026.
If you miss the last train: the night bus and taxis
The overnight workhorse is the N122, a joint KMB and Citybus route between Shau Kei Wan and Mei Foo. It runs every day from 00:10 to 05:45 at headways of roughly 17 to 35 minutes, and it runs the length of Nathan Road through Yau Ma Tei and Jordan — the market's own street corner — before continuing across the harbour to the north shore. For the bus stop nearest your hotel, check KMB's or Citybus's own route page; the route number alone is not enough at 2am.
For comparison, route 112, the daytime cross-harbour bus from Causeway Bay and North Point, makes its last departure from its own terminus at 00:30 in both directions every day. It is a late-evening option, not an all-night one.
Then there is the taxi, which is metered and therefore predictable:
| Red urban taxi — what the meter adds | Charge (HK$) |
|---|---|
| First 2 kilometres, or any part of them (the flagfall) | 29.00 |
| Every further 200 metres, or each minute of waiting, until the meter reaches $102.50 | 2.10 |
| The same, once the meter has passed $102.50 | 1.40 |
| Each piece of baggage (light hand baggage carried in the cabin is free) | 6.00 |
| A hiring arranged by telephone | 5.00 |
| Cross-harbour tunnel (Cross-Harbour, Eastern or Western), on each crossing | 25.00 toll plus 25.00 return toll |
Two notes on that table. The cross-harbour return toll is not payable if you pick the taxi up from a cross-harbour stand or if your destination is not on the opposite side of the harbour — so a Jordan-to-Central cab carries the tunnel charge both ways, and a cab within Kowloon does not. And since April 2026 taxis have had to offer at least two electronic payment methods, so you should be able to pay by card or phone as well as in cash. The tariff above is the Transport Department's, effective 14 July 2024 and still current on 27 October 2026.
Which way home, by where you are staying
| Staying in | Best late option | If you miss it |
|---|---|---|
| Jordan or Yau Ma Tei, within walking distance | Walk. The street runs between the two stations, a few minutes from either end | A taxi, and the meter starts at HK$29 |
| Elsewhere in Kowloon: Tsim Sha Tsui, Mong Kok, Hung Hom | The MTR. Jordan's last trains are 00:52 towards Central and 01:01 towards Tsuen Wan | The N122 along Nathan Road, running all night |
| Hong Kong Island: Central, Wan Chai, Causeway Bay, North Point | The MTR, changing onto the Island line; the last train towards Central is 00:52 from Jordan | The N122, which crosses the harbour and runs up the north shore |
| The airport or Lantau | Not the trains above: those are Tsuen Wan line times. The Airport Express and the Tung Chung line keep their own timetables, so check them before you commit to a late flight | A metered taxi |
Hotels within walking distance of the market are listed on the stay page, and the walking route from either station is set out on the how to get here guide.
What is still open after 9pm and after 11pm
Between 9pm and 11pm nothing has to change: the pitches are licensed until 11pm, so the market is still trading through its busiest stretch. This is the window to be there if you want the full market.
After 11pm the pitches wind down because the licence ends, not because the street shuts. The pedestrian restriction still holds until midnight, and the shops and restaurants on and around the street are licensed separately from the pitches, so their own closing times apply. The food guide names the places to eat on and near the street; the market's licensed hours in full, alongside the other Kowloon markets, are on the Hong Kong night markets business hours guide.
What is not published is a closing time for the informal street trade — the fortune tellers and the small kiosks. No operator prints hours for them, so treat any specific "open until" figure you read elsewhere as a claim rather than a schedule, and use the two clocks you can rely on: pitches to 11pm, street car-free to midnight.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board makes the same point from the other direction in its own guide to late-night shopping, Where to Shop After 9pm in Hong Kong.
Sources
- MTR station service hours and last-train times for Jordan (Exit A) and Yau Ma Tei (Exit C), plus MTR's five-minute entry-gate rule: MTR, Train service hours — checked 27 October 2026.
- Red urban taxi tariff, effective 14 July 2024: Transport Department, Taxi fare of Hong Kong — checked 27 October 2026.
- Licensed hawker trading hours, 2:00pm to 11:00pm: Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, fixed-pitch hawker location plan for the Yau Tsim District Temple Street Hawker Area (drawing YT-TE-PK).
- Part-time pedestrian street, 2:00pm to midnight daily for Temple Street between Jordan Road and Kansu Street: Transport Department, Pedestrian schemes for Jordan.
- Overnight bus N122 (Shau Kei Wan to Mei Foo) and cross-harbour route 112: route and stop data published by the operators through the Government's data portal, Citybus N122 route record — checked 27 October 2026.
