Mall Adventure

When looking up various stores and restaurants on our maps, the Central Airport Plaza kept showing up as a location for many things. It is southwest of us, but not far, so we decided to head out there Wednesday evening and find a place for dinner. The road on which the Saturday Walking Market is held goes straight down to the intersection with the First Ring Road, a superhighway that goes around the city (there is also a Second Ring Road, further out). As we headed there on the motor scooter, the traffic got thicker and thicker (five o'clock is rush hour here, as everywhere). We could see that the Ring Road was raised, which made the intersection more manageable. We headed straight on through and eventually reached a place where we could make a U-turn to get on the other side of the road where the mall entrance was. We had quickly decided that browsing in the area for restaurants or anything else wasn't going to be pleasant, just like on a busy highway strip in the US. We entered the area between the gigantic mall we could now see and a couple of very large department stores. We drove by a large motorbike parking area, but couldn't see the entrance. We ended up driving completely around the mall, exiting onto the road below the superhighway, and immediately re-entering the mall. (Driving on the left, circling to the left.) We continued around and found another motorbike parking lot and its very small entrance.

This picture only shows a portion of the lot! We were given a credit-card sized ticket on entrance and returned it on exiting. There was only a charge to park if you lost your ticket.

We walked into the mall and were amazed. There were five floors and it was enormous. At the far end of this picture, it turned to the right where there was another area at least this large.

We walked around most of the area. There was a multilevel department store at the opposite end. One floor was devoted almost entirely to technology -- phone shops, computer stores, etc., etc. One seemed to be primarily clothing with every international brand you could think of -- Guess, Clark's, Esprit, and many more.

The top floor was mostly food. There was a large sort of food court, with one counter for tickets and then many small stalls with different foods. Do you like duck?

There was also an entrance to a Cineplex and many game rooms on the fifth floor. There were many restaurants, almost all Japanese. We wandered around and looked at all the menus and ended up at the Yoyai. We both had set meals, mine fish and Dan's pork. Each tray included soup, salad, pickle, and a miso sauce -- and rice, of course. It was very good, even though Japanese is not generally one of our favorite cuisines.

On the way out, we noticed another shop that turned out to be a high-end Thai crafts department store. It was very large and we went through a good bit of it. The clothing and other articles were all beautiful. Unfortunately, the clothing is almost all quite small sized, which doesn't help me much! The photos below are just a small sample.

Lacquerware

I loved this skirt (maybe not the top...)

Wooden trays

All in all, it was quite an adventure. We are not likely to go back; we much prefer the narrow lanes and interesting sights in and around the old city. But we were glad we went.