San Diego

Having no more priviledge of being driven around everywhere, we had to make our way to San Diego the old fashioned way. Well, by train. That is old fashioned, considering I had never even once taken public transportation in my own hometown, and trains and buses in Singapore do not count! They're way too...um..maintained. Okay, I'm talking gibberish, not to say that the trains we took from LA were unmaintained, dammit.

So! From LA we're supposed to take this train to Oceanside, where we would later transit to another train to San Diego. Long story short, we got there pretty early and the next train wouldn't leave for another two and a half hours, so we parked ourselves in some chairs outside, bought burgers from Burger King (I was actually looking for the grilled mushroom burger, and Farah was initially confused to see no rendang burger in sight! We are hopeless!), and camped there, eating and talking nonsense.

Because we were talking mostly nonsense, and up to one point I even spilled my still-full Coke to the ground, and the girls made a scene by shrieking everytime some dogs passed by, even taking pictures and all while I tried to look invisible, it's fair to say that we were pretty loud. Some guy beside us who initially had his heaphone on, ended up talking to us, apparently our voices way surpassed his ghetto, RnB music.

Anyway, we were finally inside the train and we looked pretty eye-catching because of our gigantic luggages and all, some were pink and bright red. Plus, we looked so harmless. There was one guy sitting, facing us in the far right opposite seat of us, and another guy one seat behind. I didn't know why, but I just had a bad feeling about them; the first guy kept glancing at us. His eyes looked evil. I told this to the girls, and surprisingly they felt the same way.

"I have a feeling those two guys know each other," I think Farah said.

"But they were sitting there separately, acting like strangers," Bonnie added.

Damn, now I'm scared.

"Anyone has a scissors in their bags?" I blurted out, dumbly. Granted, it was our first trip unadvised, we were pretty much safe in Oklahoma and LA.

Their blank faces was all I could need to freak out. We all stared at our luggages, hopelessly.

"I don't care if they take that suitcase, as long as it's not the pink one. I put all my make-up in there..." Bonnie said, not comforting me at all.

"Oh, so you're okay with being completely naked as long as you're fully made-up?" I teased her. She looked at me as if saying, duh.

"Girls, we should bring that ghetto, RnB guy down to sit with us here," I suggested. The suspicious guy was still staring at us, and we were like, fuck!

So Farah went up, talked to the guy and he happily agreed. I said happily because his face was beaming. Dude, don't you see that we are scared?!! A little emphaty, please?

So that's how we spent the rest of our trip to San Diego; having a guy there made us feel at least a bit safer. He was supposed to alight at the stop after ours, and he offered to come down and hang out with us for the night. Eeer. We declined politely, we still need his service, afterall.

As soon as we alighted, we saw the two suspicious guys talk, so they indeed they knew each other! We hurried, we couldn't even like, stop for a second to breathe the cool San Diego air! We were too busy getting away as far as possible from the train. We only felt relieved once we got in a cab. What a ride!

But, that had to be the only slight bump on our San Diego trip; the rest was just truly amazing. We loved San Diego, and we met really great people there. There was Tim, the hotel shuttle's driver, whom we met when we first checked-in. We asked the receptionist on how to get to Sea World, and turns out, the shuttle would take and pick us up to-and-from the hotel.

So the next morning, Tim drove us and we were the only people in the shuttle. Out of nowhere, he handed us some papers.

"Well, my friend works in Sea World, so he's entitled to free passes; I asked him and got these last night," he said.

"Eh? For us?"

"Yeah, yeah, so just show those tickets in the entrance.."

"Eh? So we can get in for free?"

Seriously, we asked such dumb questions!

"Yeah.." Tim-the-driver smiled, looking like an angel.

By this time, we were laughing and screaming "thank you soo muchhhhhhh, Tiiiiiiimmmmm" like a fifth-graders. Don't you know, that otherwise, the entry ticket is like, sixty-seventy bucks?! Tim-the-driver was so nice, he completely made our day!

And of course, there's Hiro and Dion, whom we met the night on our arrival at club Belo. Hiro, whom we would meet again later in San Fransisco, and Dion, who well, let's just say he and I had a special connection. Of course, I'm being sarcastic. I hope I didn't scar him too much.

Catching Shamu show at Sea World!


Partying it up in Belo, Gaslamp District.


San Diego skyline from Coronado.


Dining at Peohe's in Coronado. Having sake!


Having drinks and playing pool at Pacific Beach.

What a trip! We would be going to Vegas after this, but none of us were even that excited anymore. Throughout our 7-hours Greyhound-journey to Vegas, we kept saying, "I miss San Diego!"