Shopping in Kuching runs through four malls that matter and a handful of smaller ones that fill in the gaps. Vivacity Megamall is the biggest and busiest, but it isn’t automatically the right one for every trip: each mall here is built around a different job, and picking the wrong one costs you an afternoon.
I’ve lived here since 2016, and a normal week touches at least two of these malls: one for school-run basics, one for the grocery run, sometimes a third for the cinema on a wet Saturday. Vivacity Megamall on Jalan Wan Alwi is the one most people mention first when they ask where to shop here, and its karaoke floor and weekend parking queues deserve a page of their own.
TL;DR
- Vivacity Megamall on Jalan Wan Alwi is Kuching’s biggest and busiest mall, with the widest anchor tenant mix and food floor.
- The Spring on Jalan Simpang Tiga opened in 2008 and is still the city’s default meeting point, even with newer malls nearby.
- Plaza Merdeka, next to the old courthouse, is the small, walkable option for anyone shopping in the old town rather than driving to the suburbs.
- Aeon Mall Kuching Central runs around its own supermarket floor, which is why families shop there weekly rather than just browse.
- Real Western grocery brands and proper furniture shopping barely exist inside Kuching’s malls; both live mostly outside them.
- Mall hours across the city run roughly 10am to 10pm, and weekday mornings sit close to empty compared with the 2pm to 5pm weekend crush.
What Is the Biggest Shopping Mall in Kuching?
Vivacity Megamall, on Jalan Wan Alwi, is the biggest shopping mall in Kuching by retail floor area and by tenant count, and it’s the one locals mean by default when someone says “let’s meet at the mall.” The Spring on Jalan Simpang Tiga held that role before Vivacity arrived, opening in 2008 as Kuching’s first proper modern mall; the two still get compared constantly by people deciding which one deserves the Saturday trip.
The short version: Vivacity has the wider mix of fashion, food and entertainment. The Spring has the loyalty of people who’ve shopped there since before Vivacity existed, and a supermarket floor plenty of families still prefer. Neither wins outright, and which one you drive to usually comes down to what’s actually on your list that day, not brand loyalty.
Vivacity Megamall: The One Everyone Defaults To
Vivacity sits on Jalan Wan Alwi in a part of town that’s grown up around it since it opened in late 2015, with banks, telco outlets and a run of newer condos now filling the streets nearby. Inside, the anchor tenants cover the basics: a department store, a supermarket, a cinema and a food floor where Sushi Zanmai, Oriental Kopi, Richeese Factory and Soru Yokohama Ramen do steady business most evenings. There’s also a karaoke floor, Rock & Roll Karaoke, which pulls a genuine crowd on a Friday night.
Parking is the one part of Vivacity that tests patience. Doors are open roughly 10am to 10pm, same as every mall in the city, but the 2pm to 5pm weekend window is the crush: the ramp queues to get in, most levels fill by early afternoon, and some of the marquee food queues run 45 minutes or longer.
Weekday mornings are the opposite: close to empty, easy parking, a mall that feels like a different building entirely. I go on a Tuesday morning if I need to get something done.
The Spring: Kuching’s Original Meeting Point
The Spring opened on Jalan Simpang Tiga in 2008, and for years before Vivacity arrived, it was simply “the mall” in Kuching. It has aged in the way malls do: smaller floor plates than Vivacity, a few dated wings, and the odd tenant-churn gap where a shop closed and nothing obvious replaced it. None of that has dented its popularity.
The food court is the section people ask about most, and it still exists and still does decent business: Sushi King, Potato Story and Signature Market are the names that keep coming up, alongside a supermarket floor a lot of families still default to over Vivacity’s. The mall was built for more than 150 shops, spread across fashion, services and a fair amount of local retail that never made it to Vivacity.
Against Vivacity, The Spring wins on nostalgia and on grocery-shopper loyalty. It loses on floor space, on the newer food names, and on parking, which is noticeably tighter than Vivacity’s ramp.
Plaza Merdeka: The Old Town’s Quieter Option
Plaza Merdeka sits right by the old courthouse in the town centre, which makes it the mall you walk to rather than drive to if you’re already downtown for the Waterfront or the Old Town’s cafes. It’s smaller and quieter than Vivacity or The Spring, without the same crowd or the same food-court draw, and it works more as a convenience stop: a pharmacy run, a phone repair, a coffee while you wait for a Grab.
It’s not where I send anyone for a full shopping trip. What it does well is location: if your afternoon is already built around the Old Town, Plaza Merdeka saves you the drive out to the suburbs for a handful of small errands.
Aeon Mall Kuching Central: Built Around the Supermarket Floor
Aeon Mall Kuching Central is the one mall on this list that isn’t really about fashion. The ground floor is dominated by Aeon’s own supermarket, and that’s the real reason most families I know go: a proper big-format grocery run, household goods, and a Daiso for the odds and ends that never seem to be in stock anywhere else.
There’s a directory of the usual mall names above the supermarket floor: fashion, food, a Uniqlo, though the cinema once planned for the mall never opened. But the supermarket is what pulls the crowd, not the shops around it, and plenty of families here weigh Aeon’s aisles against Everrise and Ta Kiong before settling on a routine.
The Smaller Malls: The Hills, CityONE, Boulevard and The Summer
Below the big four is a second tier of malls that mostly serve whichever neighbourhood they sit in, rather than pulling shoppers across town.
The Hills Shopping Mall, in the Riverside stretch near the Sarawak River, leans on its food-stall floor and a small supermarket rather than anything resembling anchor retail. It works well if you’re staying nearby and want dinner or a grocery top-up without crossing town.
CityONE Megamall, at the corner of Jalan Song and Jalan Tun Jugah, and Boulevard Shopping Mall on Jalan Datuk Tawi Sli sit a few minutes apart and effectively split the same catchment: a supermarket, a run of local fashion and electronics shops, and enough kids’ enrichment centres between them to make that stretch the after-school stop for a chunk of Kuching’s families.
The Summer Shopping Mall, out in Kota Samarahan, exists mainly for the UNIMAS corridor: students and staff who don’t want to drive 25 minutes into town for groceries and a coffee.
None of these four will replace a trip to Vivacity or The Spring for anything beyond the basics, but they’re the malls people actually use day to day if they live near one.
Who Actually Owns Kuching’s Malls?
Vivacity Megamall is the project of Coramax Sdn Bhd, the Kuching developer that built the mall together with the Jazz Suites condominium towers above it. The Spring was built and is still owned by PSB Realty Development Sdn Bhd, with the day-to-day running handled by The Spring Management Services, the same outfit that manages The Spring’s sister mall in Bintulu. The longer ownership stories sit in each mall’s own guide, linked above.
Which Brands Are Cheaper in Malaysia?
Mid-range brands you’d pay Western prices for at home tend to run cheaper here: Padini, Vincci, Cotton On and the Brands Outlet clearance racks are where Kuching residents do a chunk of their wardrobe shopping. Sales drive prices lower still: year-end, Ramadan, the 11.11 online rush. Malaysia’s lower cost base and lighter import duty on regionally-made clothing keep basics affordable compared with the UK, Australia or Singapore.
What doesn’t apply here is the bigger “shopping in Malaysia is cheap” reputation built around KLCC, Pavilion and the outlet malls near Kuala Lumpur. Kuching doesn’t have that tier of retail at all, so the savings are on everyday brands, not on the luxury and premium-outlet shopping people fly to Peninsular Malaysia for.
What Should You Actually Buy in Kuching?
If you’re visiting rather than living here, the shopping worth doing isn’t inside any of these malls. Kek lapis Sarawak, the dense, multi-layered cake baked in dozens of patterns and flavours, is the one item everyone ends up carrying home, and you’ll find it at dedicated bakeries and stalls around town more reliably than on a mall shelf.
Sarawak black and white pepper, grown on smallholdings across the state, has a real reputation among people who cook with pepper professionally, and it’s noticeably different from the tin on a supermarket shelf back home.
Pua kumbu, the hand-woven Iban textile whose patterns can take months to complete, sits at the other end of the price range entirely: a craft piece that runs into the hundreds of ringgit depending on size and the weaver. The Sarawak Craft Council’s showroom near the Waterfront is a better place to see and buy the real thing than any mall counter.
Between the pepper, the layer cakes, the textiles and the cat statues on every second roundabout, that’s a fair answer to what Kuching is known for beyond the food: specific, locally-made things you can’t order off Shopee once you’re home.
Where Do You Find Western Groceries and Furniture?
None of the four big malls are where you’ll find a real stock of Western grocery brands. Aeon’s supermarket floor gets closest, with an imported-goods aisle that covers the basics, but for a genuine range of cheese, decent bread and the specific brand someone’s missing from home, the answer is a particular supermarket branch, not a mall.
Not every branch of every chain carries the imported stock, which is exactly the kind of detail worth knowing before you drive across town on a hunch.
Furniture is its own separate problem. Kuching has no IKEA store, just a click-and-collect point: you order online, wait on delivery from Peninsular Malaysia, and pay whatever shipping adds to the bill. You can’t drive to a showroom here, because there isn’t one.
What Won’t You Find in Any Kuching Mall?
Mall retail in Kuching is limited for a city this size. The same dozen Malaysian chains repeat across Vivacity, The Spring, CityONE and Boulevard: Padini, Brands Outlet, Cotton On, Watsons, a phone shop, a bubble tea counter, on rotation.
There’s no Zara anywhere in the city. H&M did make it here, with stores at The Spring and Plaza Merdeka, and Uniqlo trades at Vivacity and Aeon, but that’s where the international fast-fashion tier stops, and the electronics selection tops out at what a mid-sized Malaysian city needs, not what a serious shopper wants.
For real clothing or electronics choice, plenty of Kuching residents book a weekend flight to Kuala Lumpur specifically to shop, or order online from Peninsular Malaysia and accept the week-plus wait for delivery. That’s the trade for living here, and no amount of new mall construction has changed it yet.
How Much of Your Month Ends Up at the Mall?
Shopping isn’t usually the line item that breaks a Kuching budget, but it adds up faster than groceries alone would suggest once you count the cinema tickets, the food court dinners and the impulse buys that come with air-conditioned space on a hot afternoon. Set against what a whole month here actually costs, rent included, mall spending stays one of the smaller lines.
On a genuinely wet Saturday, the mall becomes the default plan for a lot of families here: cinema, food court, an hour of air-conditioning before the rain eases. The mall isn’t the only answer, and what else works on a rained-out afternoon is its own list, but on the worst days, a car park that’s already full by 2pm tells you everything about how this city handles a downpour.
Last updated: July 2026. Mall locations, opening years, food court and anchor tenant names checked against each mall’s own listings and a walk-through of all four malls in June 2026.