Central Festival is a chain of shopping malls that have locations all over Thailand. They are huge, air-conditioned, and feature a load of brands that anyone from the west is no doubt already very familiar with. They are impressive structures though - i will give them that.
one of the 5 entrances to this 5 story monstrosity
It's not that I don't think this should be here; i mean, I was in this one today looking for sportswear but I would imagine if you are traveling through Thailand you probably already brought entirely too many clothes with you (as everyone tends to) and are likely not in the market for a new mobile phone that will have questionable functionality back in your home country.
I would imagine they don't want you to play in there, but i really wanted to
I think the major problem with these (for a tourist) is that the gear that is in here, even if you do like it, is almost certainly more expensive here than it would be back in your home country - which makes no sense since most of it is manufactured in Vietnam and Malaysia, but for some reason that always ends up being the case in Thailand. The pair of New Balance shoes that I had on my feet today, were for sale in the New Balance store for nearly double the price I paid for them back in the United States.
They did have this though, and i suppose that is pretty unusual for a tropical country
Once again though, as a giant human being, I was only able to find one pair of sandals out of the 6,000 or so that were for sale inside this place. 5 floors of mostly clothing stores and only one place had a size 12 (which isn't even my size, i'm a 13 but I needed new sandals so i had to.) I saw a guy that was around 190cm tall (6'4" or so) and he was in the same predicament, we gave each-other a head-nod acknowledging that we both had the same problem.
don't do it kid!
If you are in Chiang Mai, you will almost certainly be approached to go to this place and there are free shuttles all over the town. I would seriously recommend that you skip it, especially if you come from a place that already has shopping malls because I truly feel that the malls in Thailand, while lovely and generally speaking much nicer than the ones in America, are not a good value or worth the time even if the transport is free.