March 2020: California, Nevada, Utah & COVID-19

The day before our travel from London to San Francisco via Munich was the day that airlines in Europe started cancelling some flights due to COVID-19. Our flight from Munich to San Francisco was already cancelled at least 20 hours before the flight so we were automatically rebooked onto a direct London to San Francisco flight (which gave me triple the expected miles overall than I would’ve gotten with my original flight) which got us to my sister in Berkeley a good 6 hours before we had planned to be there. 

Our rental was a Prius which was quite nice to drive. I did most of the driving the first day since it was my travel buddy’s first time driving on that side of the road and driving an automatic. For me, driving an automatic feels like a birthright…The Prius was great for gas, and also gas is just a lot cheaper in the US so we really felt that the whole trip even with the Pound dropping literally every day while we were there. Also it told me things like this which really boosted my ego:

Went to one of the Berkeley Bowls with my sister and her friend to get their groceries and also for us to get supplies. It is an amazing supermarket/grocery store. The majority of my time spent in the US has been in New York City, so I haven’t seen anything like that. Their stock is also amazing for anyone of Asian origin – I saw so many things there which I know from my time in Bangladesh, India and Thailand.

We stayed with my sister’s friend who I’ve known since she was 10 years old from New York. So us New Yorkers watched New York Minute in her pretty-much New York themed apartment while having some wine & cheese:

The next day I hung out with my aunt and cousins in Santa Clara. On this day my sister’s university in California announced they would go online for classes from Monday. My other’s sister school in New York was already temporarily closed for deep cleaning while awaiting COVID-19 test results of a teacher who was in hospital with pneumonia.

The next day we flew to Las Vegas and met up with my best friend V (Summer 2013 Thailand trip).

We stayed at the Treasure Island on one end of the strip – this place has free parking. That evening we walked the entire strip through some hotels and went to Park MGM to have dinner at Best Friend by Roy Choi which was known to us from The Chef Show on Netflix. After a very filling dinner (we were happy with the vegetarian and gluten free options there), we played some slots – earned $30 from a $5 investment and took an Uber back. It was quite a walk finding the Uber – Las Vegas establishments have specific places where you can get on Ubers, kind of like most airports do.

The next morning was a pretty cloudy day with some rain the morning, so we didn’t get to lounge in the pool as we had planned. We played some more slots, had a Starbucks (Iced Caramel Cloud Macchiato which didn’t exist in the UK until…you got it, March 2020 itself) – discovered these lids for cold drinks that they now have in the US (not sure if they’re in the UK yet) which are actually really good for drinking out of if you don’t need to use a straw. Then we drove towards St George, Utah.

On the way we stopped at Mesquite, Nevada which is a city about 45 minute drive from St George where V and people she studies with go for their alcohol haul. We also did our own shopping of some super sized drinks which we brought back with us & some New Amsterdam vodka because I couldn’t find the New Amsterdam gin which Salem & I had discovered (and liked very much) in LA in 2018. We got our Walmart shopping done there too – there was already no toilet paper by this point both in Sainsbury’s in the Ladbroke Grove, UK and the Walmart in Mesquite, Nevada. We also ate at a Thai restaurant in Mesquite – the staff were super attentive and the food was very good too!

When we got to St George, we picked up V’s car and went and met her dog Jack for the first time! We did a little bit of driving around the area, then made dinner from our Walmart haul.

On our first full day in Utah, we went to Zion National Park. Coronavirus declared pandemic by WHO; Trump announced ban on visitors from Europe (not including UK or Turkey).

The day after that we drove up to Bryce Canyon Sunset Point. The drive there was just as crazy as the view from Bryce Canyon. It’s unreal that there are so many types of landscape all in the same area.
When we got to Bryce, it was completely deserted. There was no one at the entrance to check my friend’s card to let us in. And we needed the toilet but almost every place that had it was closed. Someone who worked there told us that it might be because it’s not peak season, but we could feel that it was to do with COVID-19 closedowns. My friend found out this day that her medical school would be running remotely from the following Monday which was her first day back to school after spring break. They already had a trip which was cancelled which some of her classmates were supposed to be on that week. 

The morning after that we had brunch at Kayenta Art Village and drove to LA.

We saw Santa Monica Pier at night, and the end of Route 66.

Our last day in the US was spent driving around in Rainy LA. We drove to the top of the Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard to see the Hollywood sign, and we ate a meal at Hugo’s which was great for vegetarian and gluten free, and walked around Venice Beach.

When we were back in London we went to all the places in GTA V’s Los Santos that we drove around that we could find.

On the way to the airport we went to Best Buy and bought a Roku Streaming Stick on sale to replace my Apple TV 2nd Generation which I’ve had for almost 8 years. The Streaming Stick is the only one with a remote that controls the volume, and since we only stream things, we can stick to just using one remote, and my favourite function of the Roku is that you can search for any film/show and it’ll tell you which apps are showing it at the moment.

And then for the few hours before our flight back to London, I agonised over whether the best thing would be to go to London or to fly to my parents in New York as the UK was included in the travel ban to US for non-citizens and residents from that day. It was very weird thinking that for the first time in my life I wouldn’t have the luxury or the option if I wanted to go to my parents to just buy a ticket and go…if I got onto the flight to London. We decided it would be best for me to be in my own space as it would probably be for the next months. My parents and sisters were supposed to come to London to visit the following week, but by this time we had decided they will not be making the trip and my father had just started having COVID-19 symptoms – his fever and weakness (no other major symptoms thankfully) lasted for almost 20 days, and there weren’t enough tests in NYC to get him tested for COVID-19 though they tested him for almost everything else including other forms of flu and those all came back negative. My high school sister didn’t develop any symptoms and my dad after 7 days of post- 48 hour fever free isolation and college sister after 14 days post travel isolation are now all allowed out of their isolations rooms. It worked out that I came back to London instead of going to NY because there were exactly the right number of beds and bathrooms for them to all have self-isolated for the required times away from each other. My mother sent this article about practical cleaning steps which we follow here in London as well.

There is still a ways to go in this journey with SARS-Cov-2 but this is how it unraveled in front of us through this last trip before everything went into lockdown. Upon return to London we were already ready to isolate for 14 days – I had already spoken with my work so that I would work remotely from the following day. The following day my work started being remote, and in 3 days the UK started gradually going into lockdown mode.