Night has fallen in Honolulu

It's just about 7PM in Honolulu and it's been a long day. My head thinks it's 1100PM, although I so know I'm not in Chicago. It was a good day. Here's what it looked like from the balcony of my room after the sun rose:
(Sorry for the blur - the B'berry doesn't make for the finest camera!)

My meetings started at 730AM and I had to speak, a bit off the cuff, but it panned out. It was a much more casual meeting - things roll a bit differently here. After a half day of meetings, the day was mine. Went out on a long run, well long for me but I am not sure how far I went because when I stopped at the malasada joint for a mid-run reward, I forgot to take the Nike+ off of "pause." Stupid mistake. But the malasada was totally worth it and only .60 cents! Got back to the hotel, showered, and grabbed a cab to Honolulu's Chinatown. It's Chinese New Year (it's the Year of The Ox - please make a note of it) so they were getting ready for a weekend of festivities. It was pretty crowded. The wet market was cool - lots of cow, or ox given the celebration, hooves in the meat markets. The bakeries were under seige - this one had the longest line:
I was all kinds of tempted to get in line and buy some bean cakes to join in the fun but I was on a singular mission for bahn mi. My Vietnamese cab driver told me a couple of places to try. I wound up at Ba-Le in Chinatown. The bahn mi was perfection. The French bread was warm, not piping hot, and that was good. The pork was cured just right and then the vegetables on the sandwich nearly snapped back, they were so crisp. Here it is before I obliterated it:

After that I hit a place called Hong Kong Market - an all Asian open air supermarket. It was packed to the ceiling with stuff. I could have bought out the place. I did get a couple of char siu marinades for Chinese BBQ. That will make for some amazing bao, among other things. I also picked up some really good banana cream crackers from Singapore.

After that I figured a walk was in order so rather than grabbing a cab. So I marched through downtown. Had an awesome "Hawaii 5-O" flashback passing the statue of King Kamehemeha. I wanted to be McGarrett when I was young. Seriously.

And now I'm looking out at a dark ocean and listening to the sounds of Honolulu below. I can't complain.