Chinatown

After checking in to our hotel in the Financial District, our first order of the day was to find some food. As we were near Chinatown, we made a beeline for one of our favorite restaurants - Buddha Bodai, a vegetarian kosher restaurant on Mott St.

En route to Chinatown, we experienced our first culture shock when we observed how many people were unmasked. In Hawaiʻi, mask usage is still high, even outdoors, despite rules having been relaxed. Indoor mask usage is still mandatory in Hawaiʻi, so seeing the number of unmasked people indoors in NY was a bit of a shock. I felt somewhat uncomfortable. During my time in the city, I continued to wear my mask indoors, but I did remove my mask outdoors when I wasn’t around too many people.

At Buddha Bodai, we opted to sit at an outdoor booth. One of the novel ways New York coped with the pandemic was to close lanes on many streets in order to accommodate outdoor booths for restaurant patrons to dine at. Throughout our time in the city, we saw many such booths. Most booths were basic, others were done up nicely with plants and even fans to keep patrons cool. Many other restaurants simply put out tables and chairs on the sidewalks or on the street.

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