Now THIS is a temple of worship!

British Appreciation Day at Central Festival

Just what this town needs, another mega-mall. I'm not being sarcastic here: After months on foot dodging motor bikes, dog shit and crumbling concrete, I really appreciate well-ordered commerce.

Our new shopping destination is Central Festival Chiang Mai, hyperbolically billed as "the largest shopping mall in southeast Asia." Really? Bigger than the retail meccas in Bangkok and Hong Kong? It's a mere 10-minute Red Car ride away, so Lian and I go check it out for ourselves.

Central Festival is everything Thailand could stand a double-dose of: it is clean, comfortable, intuitively organized and pedestrian-friendly. Encouragingly, the place is jam-packed with youngish Thais and farang alike, gathered as one in a universal brotherhood of mall-ratitude. And virtually all signage is in the global lingua franca, English.

Central Food Hall, a.k.a, Heaven

At last we arrive at the holiest of holies: the ground-floor Central Food Hall.

Think Whole Foods, Zupan's and Market of Choice ... allllmost. I give this market an A for effort just for displaying big wheels of parmiagano reggiano. (Lian tries a sample and her facial expression is priceless!) The clientele is almost exclusively farang men with Thai women, so we feel immediately at home.

Parmigiano Reggiano -- Joy!

Price points are all over the culinary map, topping out on the crazy scale at twenty bucks per kilo for fresh peaches. And artisan-quality baked goods remain elusive, although I see a few croissants that might rise to Albertson's standards.

$20 a kilo? I can wait.

I purchase a Norwegian salmon fillet to cook for Lian that is just so-so; I desperately want her to come experience the real deal, Northwest-caught and cedar-plank-grilled.  Working on that.

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The civil unrest down in Bangkok this morning is taking a turn for the ugly: one person shot dead in overnight violence, and all TV stations have switched to special news coverage. Essentially it's a power struggle between two elite ruling factions, one that enjoys popular support among the poor and the other favored by the comfortable class. Despite State Department warnings, now would be an excellent time to visit: lots of sudden hotel vacancies and last-minute price breaks to be had.