Thoughts on Asunción, Paraguay

The river? Contaminated since they don't have sewer system. The best place to go according to locals? The mall. Want to go anywhere else in Paraguay? It'll take you ages due to a lack of infrastructure.

It’s interesting how malls have mostly died in America but are still a huge thing in many countries, especially ones that have become more developed in the last couple of decades.

Really? This sounds very interesting, as the USA is the place that i would expect to have the most malls.

Malls are looked back on nostalgically as a 90s/2000s thing by a big percentage of the population. The whole mallwave genre is one example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallsoft

There are still many huge malls, but generally speaking the vast majority of them have closed, are empty, or are being rebranded into something else.