Bangkok Shopping Mall

Some things are universal about shopping malls. We happened to stumble into a very high end mall – there was a Porsche dealership on the 2nd of the 5 floors – and immediately recognized that “mall feeling”. This was on par with the high end malls in Dallas, Atlanta, or other big cities.

It was cool. Frigid by Thai standards, even, and parents had bundled their toddlers up in hoodies and sweats against the cold. It was Sunday morning about 11, and the place was full but not packed. Malls here have, to some extent, become the town square where people go to meet during the heat of the day, and the younger folks were obviously dressed for he-in’ and she-in’.

We needed a bit of lunch by then, so we braved the food court. This was one of the largest we’d ever seen – probably 30 or 40  restaurants plus at least that many little vendors that didn’t have their own seating areas. Like all food courts, you could buy different things from different ones to accumulate your lunch. We got some type of fried egg rolls and some shrimp spring rolls from one place and, thinking we were ordering iced tea, ended up with some very sweet orange slushy thing to drink. It was really good, though.

Malls are universal, so I won’t dwell on them. We bought a couple of maps, a new writing pad, some pens. The one thing that we did notice was that there were actually employees everywhere. If you needed help finding something, they were quick to guide you to the place you needed to be, unlike the “self-service” aspects of most American department stores now.