Posted on by karenxiao

Nomads

The weekend in March that Covid blew up and New York City went on lockdown, Willy and I bought a next-day flight and flew home to Atlanta. At the time, it was mostly at the behest of our mom (who, based on all the news about the virus from China she had been reading from WeChat, with much foresight predicted that it was only a matter of time before NYC would become the next epicenter of the virus). Most of our friends and coworkers at the time kind of thought we were overreacting by flying to Atlanta to “escape” the pandemic. But sure enough, within a few weeks (even days), troves of our New York friends had done the same and “fled” the city as well.

By July, when things were starting to stabilize in New York, our leases were expiring, and no end was in sight for the work-from-home situation, Willy and I and our respective roommates made the decision to pack up our stuff in storage and be homeless for at least the remainder of the year (or however long the situation was gonna last). It was a relatively easy decision for us: my company had already gone remote optional forever, Roommate Willy who worked at Facebook was going to live in LA with his family. Brother Willy also worked at Facebook, Sterling was moving back to Atlanta permanently (which was on his mid-term plan anyways), and Nick also worked in tech so had a relatively lenient remote policy.

Las Vegas

Willy and I did a search across the US for places we might want to temporarily call home and ended up buying one-way flights to, of all places: Vegas.

Basically all of our friends and coworkers reacted with some mixture of surprise, disbelief, or mostly confusion. But here are the reasons why Vegas was actually an ideal place to ride out the pandemic (in order of things that were important to us):

  • Proximity to nature and outdoor activities – Vegas is a 30-minute drive from Red Rock which meant we could easily do post-work hikes, and easy day/weekend trip from some of the most amazing parks in the area such as Zion/Bryce, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, etc.
  • Reliable wifi – it’s a big city so we knew we were going to have reliable wifi and not be in some random mountain town with no cell service and no internet connection
  • Good weather – a lot of places further north were going to start to get cold, and Willy and I love the heat so we loved that Vegas was warm and sunny (I don’t think we’ve gotten a single rainy day)
  • Asian food – turns out, Vegas has one of the best Chinatowns in the country and just generally has great food options. We love Asian food, obviously
  • Affordability – understandably, no one was going to Vegas in the middle of a pandemic so we were able to find pretty cheap housing
  • Transportation – many other places would’ve required that we have a car to get around, but we were able to do Vegas by mostly walking or Ubering during the week and getting rental cars for the weekend

Other places we considered:

  • Seattle and many places in California would’ve been at the top of our list, but the fires that broke out early fall basically eliminated most of those options
  • Salt Lake City was our other biggest contender but it lost to Vegas on weather, Asian food, affordability, and transportation

With that, Willy and I set off on our exciting adventure in the American Southwest. The last time we were really here together was when we were kids, so we were excited to explore this corner of the country that we otherwise wouldn’t necessarily have had the opportunity to really spend much time in.

2002 when we were just some dopey kids
Willy and I at Bryce Canyon National Park

Some of the places near Vegas we visited:

Our route:

Our favorite Vegas spots:

Basically 5 minutes from the Vegas Strip is Spring Mountain, the “Chinatown” of Vegas. I write Chinatown in quotes because the Spring Mountain area just has endless and endless strips malls full of Asian businesses of all kinds, not just Chinese: Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, etc. We honestly probably ate about 80% of our meals in Chinatown, so this is basically just a list of our favorite Vegas Chinatown spots.

We spent most of our time in Shanghai Plaza and Chinatown Plaza:

  • Shanghai Plaza
  • Chinatown Plaza & 99 Ranch Market
  • 888 Korean BBQ – I can very confidently say that this is hands down the best all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ place I have ever been to. For less than $30, you get an unlimited amount of different cuts of meat like beef, pork belly, shrimp, veggies (they even have a pork belly flight with 8 types of marinated porks).
  • Sweethoney Dessert – the most amazing and biggest menu of Asian desserts I have ever seen with fun outdoor seating overlooking Shanghai Plaza
  • Dagu Rice Noodle – this is a chain from China and its first US location is in Las Vegas. They have great rice noodles
  • Weera Thai Kitchen – fun, delicious, hip Thai place
  • Sakana Sushi – all you can eat sushi with amazing fish-to-rice ratio. I had actually come here once before when I landed in Vegas and was driving through to Zion, but still great this time even though we ordered way too much food