It was right on Christmas Day. We were excited to go to Disneyland, and we were paranoid since we've been hearing (although I had no idea from whom) that one wouldn't have enough time in a day to explore the whole Disneyland, so being kanchiong like we were, we already went out at 9 from the hotel, hoping we might get there way before noon.
I had everything planned, I had maps and bus guides, I knew which stops we must alight to transfer to another bus to get there. It didn't take long for the universe to mess it up. Soon enough, we found ourselves lost, in the middle of nowhere, right in the side of the street with no inkling clue of what to do. There was a bus stop, but what LA people called 'bus stop' was nothing more than a stick showing the bus number, and a rusty looking chair without shelter.
My watch said it was already 11 am, jeeze louise. Three of us were sitting in this unknown bus stop, shivering in cold, feeling completely defeated and desperate as the seconds went by.
"Let's just hitch-hike," someone suggested.
Well, hitch-hiking is supposed to be common in the US, right? I see that on the movie like, all the time. Yeah, there are also numbers of cases in which people were murdered because of it!
Hello? See previous paragraph, we were desperate. Our desire for Disneyland way surpassed our common sense.
Bonnie stood up, straightened up her skirt and strolled with her 5-cm heels down to the side of the street, giving the thumb.
Farah and I were laughing, half in amusement, half in disbelief. Our first attempt at hitch-hiking! It was too exciting, documentary needed! Unfortunately, we were too busy turning into ice-cubes to remember the camera.
On the corner of our eye, we saw a police car on the traffic jam on the right. We started galloping and Bonnie was provoked. At this point, she was jumping up and down, waving her hand in the air, signalling to the police that there might have been a roberry, a rape, or something extremely important.
The policeman, alerted, turned on the sirene! The car accelerated, then made a fast steer towards our direction, completely ignoring the red traffic jam! It turned so fast, the kind of action you would normally see in The Fast and The Furious! As it turned, the tire made a loud noise, and once it reached us, he pressed the brake so hard it stopped with another loud halting sound.
The officer quickly got down from the car, looked at Bonnie with a serious look on his face, ready for the worst news she might throw at him, possibly including abduction or slavery.
Still in her five-cm heels, Bonnie approached the officer, her Miu Miu bag dangling on her arm, her freshly manicured fingernails were clasped together.
"Officer....We're lost...We wanna go to Disneyland......"
Time seemed to stop. The officer was stoned for a few seconds, unable to believe his ear. He then looked sideways as if looking for a candid crews, or probably Ashton Kutcher. He looked at Bonnie again, and then at us, and he blinked a few times.
By this point, I was laughing so hard I was close to tears.
The kind officer finally regained his composure. He stopped a shuttle bus, told the driver to take and drop us at the LAX airport, and we were to take another shuttle from there to Disneyland. In the end, the heroic policeman saved our life. Eh, at least, saved our day.
But this same heroic officer probably went back to the station and warned his fellow friends about some certain three asian girls hassling police officers on a Christmas day.
And us? Well, we finally got to Disneyland at noon. But I wouldn't ever forget the sirene, the way the police car's tires made that loud noise, and the officer's priceless expression. Imagine his face if only we added, "officer, can we take picture with you?"
(More pictures are up at my multiply site!)