Here in the United States, we’ve been solving the problem of how to re-develop our dead and dying malls into something beneficial to communities and to businesses. Over in Thailand, though, a former mall took a strange turn before being completely demolished. The building filled with water, forming a pond, and local residents stocked that pond with fish to keep mosquito infestations down.

The mall was flooded in the first place because the developer defied its original building permit, building an 11-story mall when they had only been given permission to build a four-story one. The mall closed and the city government in Bangkok tore down the seven illicit floors on the mall, leaving the rest of the building in place…with no roof. The first floor flooded, and a business owner in the neighborhood explains that locals stocked the pond with fish about ten years ago to prevent mosquitoes from hatching in the big expanse of uncovered, still water. The fish multiplied in their strange, illegal semi-indoor aquarium.

A travel blogger wrote about the mall in 2013, posting stunning photos, taking pains to point out that tourists should not go there. People kept visiting and locals continued to feed the fish, and the city finally ordered the building demolished.

Authorities estimate that there are about 3,000 fish inside. Now that their home is being torn down, workers from the federal and provincial government are catching the thousands of fish in nets, and they will be held in quarantine before being released into appropriate streams and reservoirs. It’s not clear whether they will be able to survive in the wild, but at least someone is taking the care to remove them.

Fish pulled from New World pond [Bangkok Post] (via The Verge)
The Secret Of The Abandoned Fish Mall [A Taste of the Road]

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