Boulevard Shopping Mall

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Short Talk:
Sigh...what a way to start of with a new year.... being sick... like really sick....cough, headache, flu and fever... all in one package.
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Kuching is definitely not a shopping haven. If you say shopping, the first few places that pop into one’s mind would be KL, Singapore or even Bangkok. Kuching would be no where in the map for shopping.

Basically, there are only roughly 8 shopping centres in Kuching alone. Believe me they are not Mid-valley mega mall or 1-Utama in KL or Vivo City in Singapore. Some of the shopping centres are really crappy which in my opinion needs a major face-lift. Currently for me I usually shop at Tun Jugah or Riverside Shopping complex and at times Sarawak Plaza. These are the 3 shopping centres that I rate as “shoppable” place. Meaning, I can get at least something decent from there.

As for electronic gadgets, I would go to Saberkas. Saberkas is something like the IT centre in Kuching. You can find a lot of good deals for electronic gadgets in there. You can call it the “Low Yat Plaza of Kuching” or “Funan IT Mall of Kuching”, whichever you like to call it.

Over the years, Kuchingites has been craving for new, trendier, hippie, stylish, and bigger malls. Thus, that is one of the major reasons why the people down here fly over to KL, or Singapore to shop. But these days, due to the exchange rate, most people opted for KL, since we share the same currency. This resulted in? Well, bigger market for KL and that is why in KL you can see major expansion of older malls, like 1-Utama and Sunway Pyramid. Not only that, new bigger malls like Bejaya Time Square and more recently, The Garden and Pavillion KL.

Over in Kota Kinabalu, or locally known as KK, they too are in a Mall building frenzy. Within this year, they have a few mega malls being built around the city. These are not just small malls, big ones, at least 200 over retail outlets inside. The biggest being 1-Borneo which is roughly the size of Mid-Valley Mega Mall in KL. The hyper mall has over 600 retail outlets. It makes me wonder though, with a population of roughly 400,000-500,000 people and a metropolitan area of 900,000(which I doubt is correct) can sustain so many of the mega malls currently being built there. In all seriousness, Kuching itself, not the metropolitan area; we already have well over 600,000 people. But, our shopping centres are like crap ass. We don’t have this mega mall building craze down here.

Even though, developers down here in Kuching are not into the mega mall building craze, we are not left out in building bigger and nicer malls. Well, I am not sure is it correct to state that we are not in a Mall or shopping centre building craze, but in these 2 years a few new malls are being constructed. One of them being the highlight of this post, but I will go on to that later.

We roughly have, 6 new malls coming up. 3 of those being big ones. Another few under proposal or planning.

The first to open amongst them would be Boulevard Lifestyle Shopping Mall. They proudly claimed themselves as being the biggest lifestyle mall in Sarawak. This in my very honest opinion would be a very wrong statement currently.

Night View

the crappy signboard

Before I move on, a brief introduction about Boulevard. Boulevard is own by a timber tycoon down here in Sarawak. They already have a Boulevard Mall in Miri which I heard is smaller than its sister mall down here in Kuching. I also heard that the Boulevard Kuching is much more “posh” than the one in Miri. As I quoted “I HEARD”, so any mistake or error in the above statement I made, I am sorry.

Sushi King is open in Boulevard now!

When Boulevard Kuching first open, the Mall was partially completed it was still dusty and a lot of the shops are still not open. Majority of the retail space has been taken up by Boulevard hypermarket and Departmental Store. The rest of the retail outlets would be Guardian, Kenny Roasters, Pizza Hut, KFC, Sushi King, Popular Bookstore, to name a few.

Sushi King!!

too many people... =.=

As they claimed they are the biggest, but if you walked inside the mall, you would feel like it is just like Riverside or Sarawak Plaza in the city centre. In all honesty, it took me, say 15 minutes to complete walking the whole mall and already I am feeling bored with it.

World of cartoons, second branch in Kuching

To me, the mall in a way disappointed me. Why the mall bores me is that most of the shop inside sells women’s apparel. Even the shop that sells shoes is for women. I mean I would rather hang out in Sarawak Plaza for I can get more guy stuff there. For Boulevard the only few shops that I can go would be Sushi King, Guardian, Pizza Hut, Converse, Popular, and the Gent’s section for the Boulevard departmental store which is not very appealing to me. Minus off the food outlets that I mentioned I can only visit 2-4 shops in the entire mall. Now that is real boring!

its either kids or ladies apparel....sighs

3rd Popular book store in Kuching

Part of the Mall

I would only go there, when I feel bored and really nothing better to do. But now, I am waiting for another mall to open in Kuching. That is the Spring. It is Kuching largest 2-storey mall. With 150 retail outlets, a gourmet supermarket, an excellent food court. the Spring Mall seems far more promising than Boulevard. I’ve passed there a few times and the interior of the Mall is way nicer than that of Boulevard. The shops they offer are far more attractive. They even have Kenny Rogers Roasters and Sushi King, Starbucks Coffee, Secret Recipe, Manhattan Fish Market and lots more. Another plus side, Spring is so much nearer to my house and thank god for that. *winks*

In another 3 more days and Spring would be officially open. I will cover Spring a bit later.

Back to work now.