A to Z 2013: Malls

For the month of April I will be blogging alphabetically with the theme of Winnipeg versus Davao City. Not to prove a winner but simply to explore the differences and similarities between my home town and my current location.

M is for Malls!

G-Mall!

Malls might sound like a shallow topic, but it's kind of cultural here. Malls are huge in Asia! This is true both figuratively and literally. They are not just places to get some retail therapy... Grocery stores are in malls, theatres are in malls, a lot of restaurants are in malls, free concerts... People here quip that it also has "free air-con"! (Air-con being the Filipino equivalent of a/c.)

Part of the inside of G-Mall.

I don't think I have any photos of malls in Winnipeg. When you grow up there you totally take stuff like that for granted. I have a bazillion photos of flowers and trees and squirrels and geese but no malls. Sorry folks. But I'll make up for that with an inundation of photos of malls here in Davao.

"The Peak" - newly redesigned rooftop terrace on G-Mall with three levels of dining options and a view of the Gulf and surrounding mountains.

Ok, Winnipeg... We went to two major malls most often. (And not really that often.) St. Vital Centre and Polo Park. They were nice. Let's see, there is also Grant Park, Kildonan Place, Portage Place, Garden City... Did I miss any? That's all I can think of. For the most part, Winnipeg malls are small to medium size for North America, mostly one level (except the two PPs) and each have a major anchor tenant in the form of a national department store. The Bay, Sears... uh, no more Eaton's so I guess that's it. And a food court is pretty standard. Nothing all that crazy interesting.

A lot of the newer malls have trains for kids that actually drive around.

Davao is different. For one, they are pretty much all branded to the corporation that owns them. For instance, SM Lanang has an SM department store, an SM grocery store and an SM movie theatre. Gaisano and NCCC do the same thing. Ayala is slightly different in that they have unique names for their malls but also tend to develop land around their malls into business parks and condos.

Most malls will also have a section marked "Cyberzone" where most of the tech shops are.

In Winnipeg you might say that St. Vital is a slightly nicer mall than Kildonan Place, but there really isn't a huge difference. In Davao, you have "malls" that are not much more than a grocery store with four or five levels of a grungy department store above them to places that are swankier than most European malls!

Inside SM Lanang, the newest mall in town. It opened the same weekend we landed.

The dancing fountain out back of SM Lanang.

Part of the semi-outdoor food court at Abreeza.

The front of Abreeza: our happy place.