Guest Blogger: The Ei-Nyung

Seppo’s note: I slept like garbage last night. Thoughts about the robbery kept me up until about 3am. So, today, I’ll let Ei-Nyung recap the events of yesterday and today. Fun times. I’ll have something to write about how try as I might, thieves have ruined part of the vacation, and there’s simply no denying that – but that the vacation as a whole has still been incredibly awesome, and I really like Oahu. Now, handing over to the wife.

Wow, after all these years, this is my first official guest post. OMGTHEHONOR! :p Heh. Seppo skipped HI: Day 3, so I suppose I will try to use my memory and twitter logs (mostly twitter) to reconstruct what we did that day.

HI: Day 3

We woke up early again, as we’ve been doing everyday. I got a call from my friend Alex (my best friend’s older sister) and decided to meet with her at Boots & Kimo’s. And yes, we had just gone there the day before. 😀 We ate with Alex and her 7 month old son, Aiden. This time, I had Hawaiian sweet sausage, two eggs over medium, and fried rice. Damn, that fried rice is good. Seppo had the fried rice omelet (apparently, not as good in omelet form, as the cheese was overwhelming) with hash browns (meh), and Alex had the macadamia nut pancakes and fried rice.

We went to Alex’s house in Kaneohe and hung out there for a bit. She has a great view of the mountains from her house. We came back home for a nap, then Alex & Aiden came to visit and go to the beach. Whenever I say “the beach”, I mean Kailua beach, which we are literally a couple of hundred feet from. Eet ees awesome.

We headed back over to Alex’s neighborhood to Haleiwa Joe’s for dinner.

Seppo and Alex nomming on dinner
Seppo and Alex nomming on dinner

I think we came back home and conked out.

Seppo covered Day 4 pretty well, but I need to add this photo:

Seppo nomming on an early lunch at Aiea Bowl
Seppo nomming on an early lunch at Aiea Bowl

It’s like all we do is eat. Wait, that’s exactly right.

This brings us to…

HI: Day 5

On Day 4, we decided that we wanted to explore the famed Lanikai Beach, just a bit south of where we are staying. But first, we went into town to get some curry buns, a spam & egg bun, and a portugese sausage & cheese bun (this was the big winner, IMO) because that is how we roll.

It’s only about 1.5 miles from where we are staying to Lanikai but the path is rather wacky (and I’m totally enfeebled at the moment on dry land), so we decide to drive there. Finding a path to the water that actually led to beach rather than a boat launch point was rather challenging, as we ended up trying two or three paths before finding a good one. We ate the buns at one of the non-beach paths.

Lanikai is very, very small and the beach is, in general, shorter than over on the Kailua side. But the waves were gentle and there was a decent amount of coral close to the shore, so after bobbing out there for a while, we decided it’ll be a good idea to pick up some snorkel gear and go back.

And we did! Oh, but on our first run of the day, I spotted a sea turtle! I thought it was a rock, which was confusing because it was moving, then it broke through the surface where I could see its little face. Awesome.

Anyway, we returned to Lanikai in the afternoon, after Seppo ran out to Don Quijote (they spell it with a ‘j’ rather than the standard ‘x’) to pick up the gear. I will admit that I was not 100% convinced we’ll see any fish, but I am glad to say I was wrong and Seppo was 100% right. 🙂 We saw all manner of fish, not to mention an creepy eel. I suppose I think all eels are creepy looking. I managed to overcome some of my more frantic panic at sticking my face under water and continuing to breathe and had a great time. I love being in the water because nothing hurts in water. I also find myself constantly overheated, so it’s nice to cool off in the ocean.

Dinner time rolled around, and we hit up Uahi Grill, which we had tried to go to on another day (and failed). Oh MAN, was my garlic chicken good! Seppo ate something or another. Oh wait, twitter tells me it was kalua pig with kale. That was quite good as well, with a great smokey, deeep flavor offset by the greens.

Eating at Uahi Island Grill
Eating at Uahi Island Grill

We ate much too fast — scarfed down the entire meal in like 20 minutes flat) and found ourselves with nothing to do at 6:30 in the evening. We went to a bookstore for a bit but realized that we didn’t want to buy any books to carry back home. After wandering aimlessly for a bit, we went home then watched a movie on Netflix. Heh.

Kailua doesn’t have a big nightlife, and we aren’t really nightlife kind of people, so it was a fine evening of relaxing, but it did seem odd to be done with our day so early. Heh.

HI: Day 6
Seppo and I both slept badly last night yet still woke up pretty early. We headed out to the local market to grab some coffee (decaf for me) and head out to Laniakea Beach to spot some turtles, thanks to a tip from Ayyana. 😀

Looking for Turtles
Looking for Turtles

We caught sight of either 6 or 7 turtles. They were incredibly cute! I didn’t think it would be as exciting as it was. Two people who were snorkeling at the beach were caught completely off-guard by two turtles, which was hilarious to see.

We got back to the car and found that my iPhone had spawned some spontaneous art while in Seppo’s pocket.

Weird "found" art iPhone profile
Weird "found" art iPhone profile

Can you see the lady’s profile, looking up and to the left? Odd, but cute. We headed out from the beach in search of some food, both of us starving and slightly lightheaded from not eating earlier. Some of it was probably due to not drinking enough and being out in the sun too long too, but either way, we found some food at North Shore Okazu & Bento.

Seppo nomming on some handrolls and musubi at North Shore Okazu & Bento
Seppo nomming on some handrolls and musubi at North Shore Okazu & Bento

Their bacon, scallion, and crab spicy handroll was awesome! As was the spicy shrimp tempura roll. I also got a spam & takuwan musubi and a ume musubi. The ume one was weird. The ume itself was like this tiny hard, nutty-textured thing, something I’m totally not used to.

Food needs taken care of, we headed to the Bonzai Pipeline to see some surfing action.

Watching surfers at the Banzai Pipeline
Watching surfers at the Banzai Pipeline

It was surfy goodness. We sat on a little bench and people-watched for a while, then headed back to home turf.

We got back early afternoon, and I attempted to take a nap. Seppo went out to our beach to see if there was anything to see with the snorkeling gear and reported that there was nothing. Heh. We headed back out around 5pm together for a little early evening dip in the water. I’ve mentioned that I love being in the water, and it’s absolutely true. It makes all my swelling go down significantly. And the color and sounds are just astounding and soothing.

We headed out to dinner after the beach, after much googling and yelping (as we have been doing for every meal – heh), to a little place called The Food Factory. Wow, their menu is crazy big. The food was quite good, not super-remarkably so, but good enough that I enjoy every bite I ate. Seppo and I went a little overboard, he with a loco moco and lau lau, and me with a mochiko chicken and saimin. I ended up taking home my first leftovers from a meal during this trip! 😀 And also took my favorite picture of Seppo from this trip:

Seppo nomming on mochiko chicken and lau lau at The Food Factory
Seppo nomming on mochiko chicken and lau lau at The Food Factory

Check out his crazy eyes! 😀

I don’t think we have fixed plans for the morning tomorrow, but in the evening, we are heading out to an Obon Dance near Lindsi’s parents’ house. Exciting street food and dancing!

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