Pattaya malls are open again, but shopping isn’t nearly the same as it was before the coronavirus.
An informal survey of Central Group’s malls, Terminal 21 and Royal Garden found about 85 percent of shops have reopened with the other 15 percent apparently making preparations to do so.
Making a trip to the mall isn’t the breezy experience it once was, however. Before shoppers can even set foot inside, they must register by providing their contact details in writing or by scanning the government’s Thai Chana (“Thais Win”) web application.
Customers also must pass through temperature checks, various methods of clothes or shoes disinfecting, apply hand sanitizer and wear face masks. Even more maddeningly, most stores inside the mall are forcing people who already registered to do so again to gain access to individual shops.
More inconveniences await in restaurants and food courts. Already required to distance tables by up to two meters, many eateries took the social-distancing rules to an extreme, breaking up families who came to dine together, setting off a flood of complaints.
Malls are taking other steps to kill germs. Central Group installed ultraviolet light lamps on escalator steps and in shopping bag cupboards. Sportswear retailers Uniqlo used the same UV-C lamps to sterilize clothes after being tried on while Sephora created a virtual “find my shade” color picker to reduce contact between staff and customers.
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