Yesterday saw the opening of the Central Festival Beach shopping mall. For she who must be obeyed, this was the fulfillment of a dream. She has been monitoring the construction over the past year or so, and it was imperative that we be there on opening day so she could check out the stores.
This new mall heralds the arrival of the first Central Department Store in Pattaya, and it has dragged along with it some higher-end stores and a range of interesting looking restaurants into a monster mall on beach road. She who must be obeyed announced that, in future, she would be dedicating her salary to the outlets in this mall. Luckily there are plenty of places where I can sit and grab a coffee while she shops.
We arrived around 1400 and I think we managed to grab the last parking space in the two thousand car garage. Inside it was heaving with people, so we had a quick tour and grabbed some food, before heading outside to watch the Mardi Gras parade which was meant to start at 1600, but actually kicked off nearer 1800. But that’s another post.
Comments 🔗
2009-01-25| todd saysthe mall’s great, finally a single location to buy everything you need to buy…
i went shopping a month or so ago, wanted some puma shorts, rip curl shorts, nike shorts and some nike shirts etc, and just to find an average selection I had to visit about 5 different locations all over town, from jomtien, south, central and north pattaya. full day, 50% riding around going to shops. pain in the ass…
but yeah, central looks nice, went there yesterday, grabbed a starbucks and wondered around, looks pretty good, there’s lots of rumblings by the usual long term westerners of how an expensive mall will fail etc, how it’s no different to royal gardens etc… i couldn’t disagree more.
it’ll attract a lot of tourist and western locals, but more than that it’ll attract a lot of wealthy thai’s - which I think the mongers in town forget about. there’s a lot - a boatload of well off thais around that will shop there, not to mention the not so well of thais, like the people who live next to my townhouse in those shoebox apartments - but are paying off a 800,000 loan on a toyota fortuner - they’ll be shopping there… it’s all about status.
2009-01-25| Spike saysAgree, it’s a breath of fresh air and I hope it does well, she who must be obeyed has already pledged much of her salary to the outlets!