As malls opened this Sunday (May 17th) after two months of closure due to the coronavirus outbreak some had to close temporarily as they hit the maximum allowed capacity.
This Sunday in Bangkok it seemed as if the whole city decided to go to the shopping malls on the same day as the lines to enter stores and the malls stretched beyond belief. As a lot more business and leisure activities were allowed to resume on Sunday there was a mass rush to all of these as expected.
The opening processed with a few hiccups as there were still rules on social distancing and temperature checking with some malls requiring the installation of an app “Thai Chana” and registering upon entering the malls and also they could see if the malls were full and could postpone their visit or go to another mall that was not as busy.
At around 2:30 pm Ikea posted on its Social media pages that it had to close the store due to the high number of people wanting to get in as it had to keep the number of people inside the store under the maximum capacity due to social distancing rules.
In most malls even with these social distancing rules it was impossible to keep them as the mass rush of people trying to get in was too large. Some of the workers were overwhelmed with the task and asked the public to visit it during weekdays as weekends are just to busy to handle.
Some restaurant like BBQ plaza had an amusing way to enforce social distancing seating patrons with cardboard cutouts of their mascot.
