Category: Hawaii

Musing on Kailua

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I’ve only left Kailua two times since we moved here. Once to go into Ala Moana for lunch and the second time to Police Beach on the North Shore. It’s funny, nothing happens here and yet the day goes so quickly. I wake up early (sometimes as early as 6AM) and still the afternoon pounces on me. Today we played frisbee in the park, saw a giant turtle while doggy paddling in the ocean, and then made pancakes, sausage, and eggs for brunch. It was a great day and this is a great town. It’s easy to wile away the hours here. It’s really something to find myself, a hard-milled New Yorker, suddenly so immersed in a town that makes Honolulu seem exotically metropolitan.

Everyday that we go to the beach I want to go to the beach more. I grew up on Long Island and my heritage is Filipino. Beaches are nature and nurture to me and yet until I came to Hawaii I hated going to the beach! I think it’s because I would get caught up in the preparation, the ritual of self consciousness around the bathing suit, and inevitably at the end of any beach trip the sticky sandiness which follows you to the parking lot, into the car, into the house, and all over your tub. Trips to the beach were 80% trip and 20% beach.

Why it’s different here:

  1. Usually going to the beach happens within 5 minutes of deciding to go to the beach
  2. I have one sufficient bathing suit and it hangs by the door
  3. We have a stack of towels and sheets in the laundry room ready to go
  4. We have an outdoor shower (!) which I love. I love the outdoor shower. It’s amazing because it’s a hot cold shower and with it we keep a little bottle of strawberry scented shampoo and a bar of soap. I’m more clean coming back into the house from the beach than when I left.

I remember when we were going through craigslist looking for a place. We were calling any ad that had the slightest promise. When we got to the ad for this place it listed an outdoor shower as one of its special features. I called and spoke to the owner and she reiiterated before we got off the phone that there was a hot cold outdoor shower.

After a few minutes of worrying over all the details of the various apartments in my head I suddenly said to K, ‘wait a minute, is the outdoor shower the ONLY shower?’ He didn’t know and wasn’t familiar enough with Hawaii property to say for sure it wasn’t. I decided to call.

ME: Uh Charlotte, hi this is Nancy…we just spoke about the rental..um yeah I just wanted to check something…uhhh. I mean I just wanted to make sure….um you know that outdoor hot cold shower..uh well I just wanted to check is their an indoor shower too?

Charlotte very kindly didn’t laugh at me and said yes. The outdoor shower was just for coming back from the beach. There were in fact two additional indoor showers.

Kailua: Its little sister Lanikai

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Last year, visiting Hawaii for the first time, I discovered Lanikai Beach. Lanikai is the little town next to Kailua made up of mostly private residences and a stretch of beach that is about as perfect as beaches get.

Like Kailua Beach there are jelly fish issues a couple of months out of the year– you have to be careful of Portuguese man-o-war and box jellyfish. Unlike Kailua, Lanikai doesn’t have a lifeguard so it’s not the best water for beginner swimmers. I’m a beginner and very paranoid about beach safety but I’m crazy about this little town and if I had 8 million dollars I would buy a house there.

secret pathways to the beach

If you take Kawailoa Rd SE from Kailua Beach you’ll hit Lanikai pretty quickly. Within minutes you’ll be in a charming residential neighborhood that despite it’s quaint feeling boasts houses with million dollar price tags. Find a parking spot on the street and then walk to the water using one of the little pathways between houses.

Hawaii is an ongoing revelation for me. I’m a born and raised New Yorker and even though I grew up on Long Island, I’m not one for nature…much less beaches.

We circled the area for a while trying to figure out how to get to the beach, eventually parking on a little patch of grass between houses. We’d read about Lanikai in the book Oahu Revealed and it had documented a handful of the little pathways to use to get to the beach. We found one of them and at first I was like ‘what the heck is this?’ It looked like an alley to nowhere and there were even some garbage cans lining the way. I was very skeptical. But when we emerged on the other side I was taken aback by the dramatic almost cinematic appearance of this stretch of beach that seemed as quiet and gentle as the quantum space beach Jodi Foster visited in the movie Contact.

Lanikai is soft sand, no crowds, rollicking surf and total perfection. In my harried New York mental state, with my ill fitting bathing suit, and distressed  hair, I looked at K and said ‘not only does this look like a postcard but I think this is how I would feel if I was IN a postcard’.

That was last year. Now we live five minutes away from this blessed little place.

a charming Lanikai home
a charming Lanikai home

Visitors to Hawaii since we’ve been here:

  • Barack Obama and family
  • Jon and Kate plus 8
  • James Gandolfini
  • Owen Wilson

Kailua Interlude: the comforts of 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

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fruit cups don't last long in this house
fruit cups don't last long in this house

I was raised to wait…

  • at a babysitter’s on Long Island for my parents to come home.
  • in the St. John’s University parking lot for my dad to get out of his MBA night classes.
  • in the principal’s office after class for my mom to finish her work so we could start our long journey home.
  • staring at the sky in a Honda Accord hatchback parked in Jamaica, Queens for my dad to emerge from the subway.

In Kailua there are days that I’m waiting again. Elements of my comfort:

  • 12PM Little House on the Prairie
  • 2PM Beverly Hills 90210
  • a couch, a pillow, a blanket
  • peanut butter and jelly
  • chicken noodle soup
  • fruit cups
  • jon and kate plus 8 on dvr

Settling Down in Kailua: Part 2 Conveniences and Treats

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In my short term assessment, Kailua is like a resort town for locals. It doesn’t feel like there are alot of tourists here even though the beach is easy to access golden, quiet, and clean. Maybe it’s that tourists conduct themselves differently here. It’s one of the prettiest and most relaxing beaches I’ve ever been to. We’ve been here for over 3 weeks now and I’ve come to the conclusion that if you can’t find comfort here you’re probably a little crazy.

what to know/ bring to Kailua Beach

  • sunblock– nothing beats Le Roche Posay Anthelios spf 50 any formulation
  • tan enhancer– Maui Babe browning lotion
  • flip flops – reef flip flops can be pretty and you feel like you’re walking on marshmallows (minus being sticky)
  • lip balm/sun block– Epicuren lip balm spf 8

note: if you’re not used to the sun you should have a bottle of water with you.

In NY we order takeout or eat out 97% of our meals. In Kailua we’ve cooked every dinner except for one. It’s a refreshing change. One of my favorite things to do here is make breakfast: taro pancakes, bacon and a fried egg. I love breakfast.

how to fry an egg: http://www.ehow.com/how_2637_fry-egg.html

When we were in Shanghai and didn’t have a kitchen I ordered the same thing every morning from Hua Ting Hotel room service: blueberry pancakes, hashbrowns, bacon, congee and a salted egg. Same goes for our four months in Vancouver’s Sutton Place Hotel: pancakes, hash browns, eggs with ketchup and tabasco.

The difference here is that we have a large kitchen with tons of counter space, a dishwasher and a ceramic top stove. I’ve discovered that recipes, like maps aren’t so confounding. If you take the time and patiently do what each step tells you to do, almost anyone can roast a chicken!

favorite recipe: zuni roast chicken: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4401342

These are the things that I haven’t managed to get used to: Hawaii bugs and geckos; how dark evenings are; how quiet it is; and finally people who don’t lock their cars and houses. Pretty much as soon as it gets dark, I lock all the doors and turn on every porch and lanai light. It’s very interesting how menacing a bird landing in a palm tree can sound.

good cheap white wine brands available at Kailua’s Foodland

  1. Coppola
  2. Kendall Jackson
  3. Ecco Domani

Part 3: Kailua: Its little sister Lankai

Hawaii Indoors

thethreeonenine

Today is day 12 of my new life in Hawaii. I’ve become obsessed with facebook again and my three email inboxes have decreased in traffic drastically. In twelve days we found a home by the beach, bought our first car, and have embarked on domestic life full speed ahead.

In light of this, I’ve begun writing again. This is where I’ll share my thoughts on people I’ve met, things I’ve seen, what I’m obsessed with, and my search for the best of everything