Most people probably don’t find their way to Chiangmai for the huge variety of incredible malls! But if you live here, you soon realize that this is city is mall heaven. And each has its own personality, whether it is a small older location or one of the huge new sprawling megamalls that seem to be opening weekly. In the last two weeks alone, two major new shopping centers opened, the Promenade Resort and the Central Festival. We checked out the first one a couple days ago and were invited to the official launch party of the latter.
You never know what email you will find in your box when you have a blog! Last week I received a note from Krittana Khurana in Bangkok, the International Marketing Executive of Central Pattana Public Co, the owners of the new Central Festival Mall. She had run across my blog, enjoyed some of the postings and thought I might be interested in attending the official launch party of their new Central Festival Mall that opened November 14. So we received an official invitation to attend as “press” representatives! Having been here only several months, that was very cool!
On Thursday, we dug out some stuff other than t-shirts and shorts, jumped on the scooter, hung a left at Nimmanhaemin and headed out along the ring road to the mall. We had no idea what to expect. We soon saw the huge building in the distance and, at about the same time, the traffic slowed to a standstill. Little did we know that all these vehicles were headed for the grand opening at 4:00. It was nuts!
One of the adjacent fields had been turned into a temporary parking lot and it was totally inundated with cars, SUVs and motorcycles. Luckily, it had been a dry week or navigating this rut-filled dirt pile would have turned into pushing my scooter through a mud-hole. We soon joined the hundreds of people heading for the entrance and found our way to the official area, where the grand opening was going to take place.
