I spent the first 24 hours of my current trip in the city of angels and let me tell you, it wasn’t how I remembered it and the city certainly did not leave a good impression.

My mom and I arrived at LAX early on Friday morning. All along the flight, I got beautiful weather, not a cloud in sight but when the plane approached San Bernardino, clouds began to form. Soon, the plane was above the clouds, leaving me with not much to see. I suspected it was the marine layer. It didn’t dissipate for the duration of the day.

My mom’s friend came to pick us up from the airport and took us to the Chinese consulate to handle the business of my mom and my Chinese visitor visas. It was the primary reason for this trip, which I think it’s ridiculous. The building in which we waited to be called was being suffocating, with no windows and we couldn’t go out without needing to go through security again. If you’ve ever watched sit-com where the character is sitting on a metal chair, waiting to be called, that was me along with probably over 100 people.

On just 5 hours of sleep, you can only imagine how I was feeling. Not only I felt nauseous but I felt a headache coming in. It was like I was hyperventilating and couldn’t find a way to breathe. Over 2 hours later, I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. There was just 1 person between us and getting out of there.

A few hours later, after getting picked up again by my mom’s friend and getting some food into my gurgling stomach, we were dropped off at our accommodation for the night – a hotel by the Union Station, so we could walk to the station in the morning to catch our train. Shortly after dropping off our luggage, we decided to make our way to the Union Station, to see how far we would have to walk in the morning.

The street was chaotic. There was graffiti on just about every vertical surface – walls, bridges, if it stands, it’s graffitied. The sidewalk was also full of litter while there were people smoking cannabis, people running up to us shouting random things, and a bottom half-naked woman parading up and down the street, screaming random things. It was horrific. What is happening? I remember asking myself. This is insane.

I didn’t even want to enter the station, I just wanted to run back to the hotel as fast as I could and wait this out. However, my mom had other ideas. She wanted to go to Chinatown. So we went. Let me tell you, when that strange man walked to us, shouting “make them angry”, I almost screamed because that was how terrified I was. I felt like I was living in a horror movie.

Chinatown was quiet, quieter than I remember. It was a 4 pm on a weekday and yet, most shops were closed. After a quick walk around, we decided to head back to the hotel because the longer I walked down the street, the more paranoid I felt. Perhaps, it was because I’ve felt safe for far too long or perhaps, I was just being silly but one thing I’ve gathered is the Los Angeles I knew from all those years ago no longer exist.