“Ghost town” Pandemic Prowling #7

About Pandemic Prowling: In this series, Pandemic Prowling, I share stories about my travels across 4 continents (Asia, N. America, S. America, Africa) amidst the outbreak of Covid19.

(late March 2020)

After bouncing around a number of flights on the trip back from SE Asia to the States as discussed in the previous post, I made it back to San Francisco, CA in a rather empty flight.

My family was worried about how I was going to get from the airport back to the city reason being that many of the transportation services were either suspended or severely limited. I arrived in SFO early in the evening and caught one of the last train rides back into town.

It was quiet, which didn’t bother me much as it was getting late into the night anyways. Masks were a norm, but besides that, I shrugged. Getting back to my childhood home I was greeted by my mother. Masked & socially distanced.

“Hi Mom”

Mom took a nervous step back and pointed a disinfectant spray at me. Her sister in law had advised her to take all precautionary measures necessary.

“Geez Mom,” I thought to myself “I had only been to Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia with layovers in Singapore & Taiwan during these pandemic times.”

Mom proceeded to heavily insist on removing the contents of my bag so she could spray and wash everything.

I sighed & obliged.

After getting settled, my mother told me that I haven’t seen the state of my old neighborhood just yet as it was evening when I got back & that I should take a look around tomorrow.

Tomorrow came & I went out to check it out & well…

Rather then words, here is some film

Closed down shops & empty streets. Typical attributes of a ghost town.

It looked like the beginning of the end of the world to me based on what I saw around town. My reaction then was to go to the local Safeway to stop up on a bunch of dry goods.

My reasoning led me to conclude that things were going to hit the fan soon, so it made sense to be prepared. And with food & water stocked, me and my mom waited.

And waited.

And well, me being me, my mind began drifting from the seemingly rational decision of staying put to a decision that did not sound so wise.