Bich Huong and two other friends traveled 40 kilometers from neighboring Bac Ninh province in Hanoi to a newly opened shopping complex in the capital’s Tay Ho district.
Like anyone who has visited the mall since it opened last week, they knew the facility was incomplete and most of its attractions had yet to open.
“I couldn’t wait for the mall to officially open because I heard people say it was the biggest mall in Hanoi,” Huong said.
Knowing that the mall was still under construction, the 29-year-old was surprised to see it full of customers.
“It was even difficult to find a place without people passing by to take a picture,” she said.
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People flock to a shopping mall in Hanoi’s Tay Ho district on August 8, 2023, despite it still being under construction. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Nguyen |
Thanh Ha, 32, her husband and their three-year-old daughter were three other guests visiting the mall. She said 90% of the stores were empty and visitors had nothing to do but walk around the place looking at the ceiling and walls.
Sometimes there were even lines of people queuing and waiting to do it.
“Despite this, the building has been full of visitors every day, especially after 7 p.m. The escalators and elevators are packed with people,” she said. “I don’t know why so many people visit a building that is still in its ‘soft opening’ phase.”
Dang Hien, 21, paid 280,000 VND (about $12) for a ticket to the building’s aquarium, which is said to have the largest curved acrylic tank in Southeast Asia.
“The ticket price was relatively high, but I thought it was still a good deal given that the aquarium operator had promised it was home to up to 31,000 marine species,” he said. she stated.
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Hien visiting the resort’s indoor aquarium on August 1, 2023. Photo courtesy of Hien |
Many other families with children lined up at the entrance to the aquarium to get their tickets. Many people said they had to wait almost an hour to buy tickets. Still, the aquarium reported that it had sold about 4,000 tickets since the complex opened to the public.
Psychologists have attributed the phenomenon of people gathering in new places to Vietnamese people’s curiosity for new things.
Dr. Hoang Trung Hoc, head of the Department of Psychology and Education at the National Academy of Educational Management, said Vietnamese culture originated from a wet rice civilization, which is characterized by the need for connect, share and stay very collective.
For this reason, current generations tend to pay a lot of attention to phenomena that arouse the interest of the wider community, including “the opening of Hanoi’s largest shopping mall”.
Dr. Do Minh Cuong, deputy director of the Institute of Enterprise Culture of the Vietnam Association for the Development of Enterprise Culture, added that the tendency to visit entertainment complexes during their opening period smoothly also reflected the growing demand for entertainment in Hanoi, experts said. the city is in short supply these days.
It is also believed that some of these visitors came for “fear of missing something”, a desire to have new photos to share or to avoid the scorching heat outside.
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Seats inside the building fully occupied on August 8, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Nguyen |
Although this is a positive trend, Cuong warned that visitors should be aware of risks such as theft or the dangers posed by incomplete infrastructure when visiting. He suggested that local authorities, the complex’s board of directors and the project’s investors work together to come up with a plan to prevent the undesirable or unintended consequences of opening a massive but incomplete facility to the public.
“People should bear in mind that the infrastructure has not been fully completed either,” Cuong said. “They should thoroughly research what the resort has to offer, so as not to be disappointed in case the actual facilities are not yet fully open.”
Hien’s experience, for her part, could have been better had she known what Cuong had said before arriving at the resort.
She was disappointed to see no signs of sharks and penguins in the aquarium, contrary to what the establishment had advertised. There were even plastic jellyfish in several tanks.
“I thought everything was ready because the aquarium had opened its doors to the public,” she said. “But the reality was far from what was promised. You should probably visit the place in a month or two, when they finish importing the creatures to avoid wasting money.”
Ha’s family also exhausted themselves wandering around the building’s seven empty floors.
“We’ll probably come back when it’s all over, to have the best experience,” she said.
