The Mall of Asia

From the years it entered in retail business by selling shoes, Shoe Mart has gone a long way.

It no longer manufactures shoes. It builds gigantic malls. And lately it opened what arguably could be the biggest mall in Asia.

In fact, the latest and biggest SM mall is called the "Mall of Asia" which opened last Sunday in Pasay City.

You won't miss the Mall of Asia, not only because of its size. It is also located at the tip of Epifanio De Los Santos Avenue (EDSA) going south, at the reclamation area.

The mall covers a floor area of 386,000 square meters, or just about thirty eight hectares, sprawling upon reclaimed land of about sixty hectares, frongint the Manila Bay.

Last Sunday we heared the mall was already open so I took my brother and his children Pia and Nat-Nat who were on a brief visit in Manila, to see the SM Mall of Asia.

Little did we realize that it was opening weekend. And a multitude was there.

I really don't like going to malls. Its a place where you usually see the same stores.

But I noticed there were some new stores that opened in the Mall of Asia. When we entered the north entrace, we were greeted by an Olympic-size skating rink where a huge photograph of Mount Everest is mounted.

For a moment, one gets to feel like he's at the foot of the mountain.

Well, expectedlly, the kids wanted to go straight to the Toy Kingdom. And boy, all the other kids were there.

Since it was opening weekend, popular characters of television cartoon shows were there to entertain the children.

We only got to visit the northern part of the mall because it was just too big.

The usual restaurants are housed in one section in the northern part of the mall.

I told my wife we should visit the Mall of Asia again, but not on a weekend so there would relatively be lesser people.

I used to work in the Senate which is just a few hundred meters away from the SM Mall of Asia.

At the time I was there, I remember looking from the top what used to be an empty piece of land, with contruction going on.

Just a few years have gone by, and the empty lot now hosts the country's biggest mall.