Bangkok is a city of shopping centres but, after almost four years in the Thai capital, I have yet to find “the one”. There are so many to choose from and the scale is on another level, especially compared to what was available in my previous home city, Hong Kong. I challenge you to wander through Central World, one of the largest malls on the globe, without getting lost. (If you manage without a local escort, you deserve the Monocle scout’s badge for Retail Orienteering.) Thais don’t seem to have the same wayfinding issues as I do and flit through these commercial hubs with ease. 
 
Shopping centres here offer everything from supermarkets and cinemas to car showrooms, health clinics and soft-play facilities. Of course, there’s also plenty of air conditioning. Central Bangna’s decision to plonk an outdoor waterpark on the roof was inspired and I relish taking my kids there under the pretence that it’s a treat for them.

Beyond the fun, these malls play an important part in Thailand’s economy. Central Group’s development arm, Central Pattana (CPN), currently operates more than 40 shopping complexes nationwide. Every time CPN opens a new site in a Bangkok suburb or a second-tier city, such as Khon Kaen or Nakhon Sawan, tourists flock in, hotels spring up to accommodate all of the staff visiting from head office and residential towers grow in size. The listed company’s financial results for the start of this year show double-digit growth, with net profit up by 18 per cent – a staggering achievement in a depressed market that’s being dragged down by household debt and millions of absent overseas tourists.

CPN has had a particularly busy year. Central Park Bangkok officially opened in September 2025 just across from Lumpini Park in the heart of the city, as part of a mixed-use collaboration with prominent Thai hospitality brand Dusit Hotels & Resorts. Earlier this month, it hosted a press conference for the next big project, which is expected to begin in 2027 in Siam Square: Central Central, a joint venture with Japan’s Mitsubishi Estate. Not to be outdone, The Mall Group plans to open Bangkok Mall in 2028. The huge construction site will dwarf Central World and continue Bangkok’s eastward expansion towards Suvarnabhumi Airport.

As the industry grows, new operators with deep pockets are trying their luck with mixed results. I’m writing this at Cloud 11 during a music-festival-style opening party. Singers and bands are performing across the mixed-use development, including inside a 7-Eleven convenience store. Property developer MQDC is not short of a penny, nor lacking in ambition. A former Universal Music Group executive is leading the project, Snøhetta designed it and Bangkok’s The Commons has created a shopping mall concept. MQDC’s second mall opens in August; Happitat will be a “destination dedicated to happiness” with an index that will track customer satisfaction.

These property developments deserve top marks for creativity but it might take time for the CFOs to crack a smile. Shopping centres are not for the faint-hearted. On the surface, they look a lot like coffee shops: a simple business model with a licence to print money. But they exist in a competitive environment and require high volumes of people to generate fairly low profit margins. Success requires retail industry know-how, long-term brand relationships and a secret sauce that turns a concrete edifice into a bustling emporium. The likes of One Bangkok, a gigantic mixed-use project backed by a beer conglomerate, have shown the difficulties that newcomers can run into. Central Park nearby, however, has become an immediate hit and slotted comfortably into Bangkok’s existing landscape. 
 
It’s not close enough to become my mall, though, so I’ll continue to shop around. And this being Bangkok, I won’t have long to wait. Indeed, CPN is opening another new one at the end of this year – up the road from my apartment and nextdoor to the first that it built in the early 1980s. 
 
James Chambers is Monocle’s Asia editor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Further reading:
 
- Thrifting gears: The secondhand festival winning Bangkok’s retail market

- Meet Natira Boonsri, CEO of Central Department Store, on the Thai retail giant’s future

- How Supaluck Umpujh turned Bangkok’s malls into a model for Asian luxury retail

Could you handle a crisis at 40,000 feet? Pilot Ricardo Nunes knows a thing or two about high-pressure decisions. He joins Monocle’s latest Quality of Life Conference as a speaker to share lessons from his career as a search-and-rescue pilot before heading to the cockpit as a commercial captain at TAP Air Portugal.

Expect plenty of insights on everything from airline secrets and how geopolitics is shaping our holidays to the unseen world of no-fly zones. If you’re keen to understand aviation, Nunes should be on your radar.

Ricardo Nunes is one of more than 30 speakers joining us in Lisbon this September. Come along for a packed itinerary of high-flyers across diplomacy and design.

Two conflicts that have so far overlapped through arms and intelligence-sharing alliances are now veering towards a collision (writes Inzamam Rashid). Iran says that a Ukrainian strike on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea caused an explosion that killed a sailor and injured another. Ukraine claims that it targeted ships involved in transporting military cargo to Russia. Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has condemned the attack as a violation of the UN Charter, carried out at Israel’s behest, and warned that it “cannot go unanswered”.

Iranian-designed Shahed drones have battered Ukraine’s cities for years and the Caspian route has become part of the supply chain sustaining Russia’s war. Volodymyr Zelensky has also accused Moscow of providing Tehran with satellite imagery of US military facilities in the Gulf states. For Kyiv, there are commercial considerations at play too: Ukraine recently signed a 10-year defence partnership with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE for maritime drones, electronic-warfare capabilities and interception systems that have been tested under the harshest conditions. 

Ukraine can offer the Gulf more adaptable and sustainable ways to counter Iranian drones than firing multimillion-dollar missiles at low-cost targets. By striking an Iranian vessel, however, Kyiv risks turning itself from a supplier of defensive expertise into an active participant. Iran could easily retaliate – after all, parts of Ukraine lie within reach of Iranian drones and missiles – but it would be strategically reckless. The real danger now is the potential merger of two conflicts that the Gulf states have spent considerable diplomatic energy trying to contain. 

Zelensky knows the value of Ukrainian know-how. Yesterday he met the UK’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, in London – the country’s fifth leader since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. He might now have more of value to offer Burnham than the other way round. To learn more about the conflicts and hear the latest news, tune in to ‘The Briefing’.