china keeps it in the family

yo peeps. On the 2 month anniversary of me returning to america, i give a moment of silence to China.

*moment

that being said, my OTHER cousin, as inspired by VACHINA, has found her way to China as well..by herself. What a badass (it must run in the YIN family).

You can check out her blog here.

Teaching English in Asia

Hey there. Don't know if anyone comes to this site anymore, but I am considering teaching English in China. Anyone have any advice or referrals for schools / programs? Some people have warned me against it...now that I think about it, I haven't talked to anyone who has said it was amazing... That does not bode well...


Thanks!!

it's complete

Well...I'm back, and yes, the triumvirate is complete. It's also probably true that the only people who read this blog now are me, woody, and cynthia...reliving what was once our wildest adventures.

I spent the last month learning how to read and write Chinese. I met a lot of cool people. You'd be AMAZED at how many people, that aren't Chinese, were there learning the language. I met people from Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, UK, Ecuador, Spain, Mexico, Holland, Thailand, the States, you name it. Crazy. Just more proof that the CHINESE will one day take over the world, SON!
Pictured here are our friends from school. In front, it's me and Ben
In the rear, from left to right is Ray, Joe, Jennifer, Andrew, Jay, Jen, and Tiffany

It feels good to be back. Walking the streets of the Upper West Side today, I felt like I was home, although I was looking out for spitting, cursing, and prostitutes (which i found none).

First meal back in America, I wanted something American and spectacular!

I also got the bill which was American and spectacular, as well.
No more are the days of having breakfast for a mere $0.26, that's for sure.

The best part of China were the lifelong friends that I've made and the experiences that I've had.

This picture was taken in HANZHOU, China. Pictured here are my sister-in-law Jen, my brother Ben, Ray and Joyce (who we met in Shanghai)

Shout out to Ray and Joyce. They are good people. If there was a battle between Ray and Joyce and my brother and his wife, I am not sure which couple would win the "best suited for one another" contest. Anyway, if you ever need a management consultant or if you are looking for work in Shanghai, these are the folks to talk to!

Also, my favorite guy I met in the street is this dude:

Tell me that's not Doc Brown from Back to the Future!

At the beginning of this blog, I was scared out my mind. Now that I can finally look back at these 2 months, I realize that it was ok to be scared, but there was nothing really to be afraid of. And for me, I think that was the life lesson. Yes, it's normal and ok to be scared like a little girl. But go ahead and do what you want to do, and in the end, you'll be glad you did it.

Now you know...and knowing is half the battle.

On a side note, TRANSFORMERS rocked my world.

I look forward to seeing all my friends again, and also all of you commenters that I have yet to meet.

Extras

Whilst traveling for 30 hours back from Thailand to NY (I had 2 layovers), I lost my book and worked on a montage of extra video footage that never made it on the blog. Targeted for those who replay movies with audio commentary, watch bloopers and deleted scenes etc...

it's so hard to say goodbye

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and then there was one

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. All I know is that I want to be the catcher in the rye. My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hun. All famous and popular quotes, and all have nothing to do with vachina (I did however re-read Catcher in the Rye... it sucked in high school and it still sucks now.) Anyway, this is all a futile attempt for me to deny that Team Vachina is breaking up. It was such a quick romance…one that I thought would last forever, but now, alas, it has broken my heart. Sigh. Cry. Vomit. Dizziness.

I've learned so much since Day 1. Here is an updated retrospective.

WOODY


Strengths: Goes with the flow. Amazing with keyboard shortcuts. Looks good in American Apparel undies.

Weaknesses: Needs to stop every 10 minutes for water. Is more "surprisingly conservative" than I would have EVER imagined, especially in China. Picks gay clubs for us to go to (oh, he didn’t tell you THAT did he?) Thinks he’s a supermodel now and acts like it.



CTOWN


Strengths: Is a girl, so gives Woods and I instant street cred with the chicks. Guilin girls thought she was a super model. Wakes us up in the morning (then falls back asleep). Started the whole music video trend.

Weaknesses: Likes to lose important things like her ATM card, wallet, and her innocence. Still likes to swallow cantaloupes, but now has added mangoes, as well.




SIMON

Strengths: His ability to convince Team Vachina that PIBE is a good thing, even though we really had no idea what the heck we were doing.

Weaknesses: going to miss the hell out of VACHINA.BLOGSPOT.COM




Favorite moments: creating a “BUG” for all our videos, CTOWN acting drunk without sipping a single sip of alcohol at 3:30AM EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Roller skating and bowling. Fantasy, Paradise, Damn, Girl. Teaching our moms how to use youtube. Laughing out loud uncontrollably at really stupid stuff. Oh yeah, and being in China for a month.

By the time you read this, Woody will be in the process of starting to get really yucky teeth and CTOWN will be somewhere over the ocean on the way home.

Woods, thanks for teaching me humility
Cynthia, thanks for teaching me honor
Vachina, thanks for teaching me how to love

One. One moment in time. Pepsi One. One flew over the Cuckoo's nest. One Love. One. It really is the loneliest number.

Back to reality

The last couple days in Thailand were eye-opening. Went to a ping pong show. So that happened. We also went to a cabaret show called Calypso Cabaret which stars mostly ladyboys / drag queens. We saw signs for this everywhere. It’s more tame than it sounds. They lost me when they had Thai Marilyn Monroes, Tina Turners and Michael Jacksons perform a medley. Plus it was all lip-synced. Boo. It felt like the end of Dirty Dancing when Baby is sitting through the boring, stale, grown-up show -- only Patrick Swayze and his rag tag group of cutting edge youths never come to the rescue to make the party Real.



Catching a plane in a couple hours. Meanwhile, I am sitting in our hotel room amongst a nuclear fall-out of our useless night market buys, also dubbed precious memories, not packed at all.

Thanks vachina. Don’t know what we would have done without you. You were probably like the kid that distracted us parents from tearing each other to pieces. Or maybe the catalyst for a future one-upping rivalry between the three of us that will make the rivalry in The Prestige look brief. In any case, it’s been more than expected. See you back in the present time and no longer from 12 hours into the future.

Simon is going back to Shanghai to study Chinese, so Vachina may still live on yet...

PS. If you are ever abroad and lose your atm card and need access to those funds, do not under any circumstances open a bank account with the Bank of China, Guilin branch, and have Commerce Bank wire money over into it. I’m just saying. Use Western Union. For the love of Buddha, use Western Union.

PPS. If anyone wants to go to Guilin, China, let me know. I need to go too to run an errand...

Thailand recap + coping

Woody pretty much covered everything that we have been remiss about blogging, and now the feat of following up his majestic sign off...

We went to Thailand thinking that it would be a week of relaxation, beaching, getting cheap massages and living off $10 a day. First stop -- the beach! It actually ended up being pretty expensive and hectic. Koh Samui's Hat Chaweng Beach was like a Euro-Cancun Frat/Sorority destination + of course, old white guys w/ Thai chicks. The main strip was a tourist trap packed with souvenir shops and pricey restaurants and hotels.



We got a couple massages. I felt like an addict after the first one. The girls performed synchronized pounding on all of us and double-teamed each of us at one point. They always try to steer you away from the Thai massage, which is always the cheapest one. Why wouldn't you want to try the Thai massage in Thailand? I will never know because their persuasion worked on us. "Thai massage is hard and rough. Oil is relaxing. If you have never had a Thai massage before, you should get an oil massage." By that logic, one would never get a Thai massage.

The nearby island of Ko Pha-Ngan celebrates the full moon by having a rave on the beach called The Full Moon Party. It consists of flame throwers, bubble parties, elevated dance stages, house/trans/pop/hip hop music blasting from the row of bars, black light tattoos, buckets of mixed drinks and locals dealing along the shore.



If was fun, but there wasn't a sense of community that you might expect at something like this. Everyone stayed to themselves or were passed out on the beach.

One of the highlights of Thailand for me was scuba diving. We went to a private beach off Koh Tao. It was my first time going. The water is so clear, and there are fish in even 1 inch of water. The fish are friendly too, if they can be that. It is probably more of them treating us as if we were just another sea being. A whole school of big, rainbow fish encircled Woody, not unlike they do Ariel during the "Under The Sea" number in "The Little Mermaid."



Second stop -- Bangkok! A custom that caught me off guard was the Thai people's earnest bowing with prayer hands after you have finished a conversation. So I have gotten into the habit of doing a head bow whenever acknowledging someone or when I get change back etc. If you don't belive me, ask this guy.



The malls here are ridonks. They have a lot of pride in their malls. Their food courts have good food, flat screen tvs, huge aquariums and a gourmet market. Although, the flat screens just play a loop of commercials, so you eat to the first 30 seconds of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" every 2 minutes when this car commercial comes on. Simon calls this area the Rodeo Drive of Bangkok. This is the exterior of the mall - Siam Paragon/Siam Center.



On the 3rd floor of the mall:



Next to these, they also have Ferraris, Lambourghinis, Lotus-es and Guess jeans.

On the first floor, they had a photo studio that was in the vain of glamour shots. We couldn't resist.




Rain was here to perform a concert, and he stayed in the hotel across from this mall. He was posted up everywhere. I really wanted to go see him, but the guys were equally enthusiastic about not going. My appetite was slightly satiated when I saw him schilling for orange product.



After Woody left, we moved to expat central. We live on a street (Khao San) that is listed as a Night Market in Lonely Planet. It's another culture shock. The foreigners outnumber the locals about 5 to 1 here. Everyone is extremely outgoing. They have mobile bars set up in the streets and stools for people to quickly get their drink on.



Also heard some live music. Thailand is a lot more hip and modern than I thought. Definitely more than China! Communist vs Capitalist? Everyone is also very polite. They bargain here with a smile instead of the cut throat bargaining in China. Although they love their 90's music. On MTV, they played back to back: "Hammer Time", "Macarena", and "Who Let The Dogs Out." This might have been a 90s block, but at the bubble party at the Full Moon Party, they played "Get Jiggy With It" and other 90s songs. Why not? I love me some 90s music.

Simon and I are here for a couple more nights sans Woody. We'll prob have one more sign off blog. Til then, here is a tribute to our ex-fellow expat:

sadness prevails

OK so it's coming down to the wire on this one. Team Vachina has basically been weeping an endless stream of tears because our vacation to our homeland is winding down to zero. Tomorrow I'm going to England, to go on tour with my friend's band The Flesh.

So I will give you a recap of things from my POV... so much has happened since my last post that this post is now officially in the "epic" status:

SHANGHAI

After Roller Rink Revival, the next night we got wasted and played expat bowling. The rules are: if you bowl a strike, you can tell someone to take a shot of Bai Jiu, which is a liquor that costs $1.13 US per bottle and tastes like castor oil. If you get a gutter ball, you must yourself take a shot. We got Adrian wasted out of his mindgrapes and by the end of the night he was drinking a coke with a rat in it.



We also ate crayfish, which for Cynth and me was like 1 mindblock away from us throwing up... My mental strategy was essentially: "look at someone else in the eyes while your hands rip open a crayfish. talk to them about literally anything. never let there be a moment where no one is talking, because that will make your brain go back to the fact that you're eating a giant twitching cockroach of the sea that was probably bred in an underground indoor pool. take a swig of sprite." Afterwards to congratulate ourselves, Adrian and I bought bootleg music DVDs (Yanni live for him, karaoke versions of ABBA videos for me).

Our last night there, we went to go see Adrian DJ, and he destroyed the place when he played the best dance song ever recorded:



Then we tried to go to Karaoke afterwards, but with no locals to guide us, we sat there like drunk monkeys trying to make the machine work. In the end, we sang "Tainted Love" twice, "I Had the Time of My Life," and 50 Cent's "Disco Inferno" about 12 times.

THAILAND

Let's just say that Thailand is not my favorite place on the planet. Everywhere we went there were horrible 40 year old white dudes with teenage Thai chicks hanging on their arms. Dude, I thought I got indignant whenever I see white dudes with Asian chicks? Thai guys must be fuming volcanoes on the insides: every single Thai female has a creepy middle aged white guy paying their bills, grabbing their asses, motorcycling them around, etc etc.



Also, I got the runs, got 46% of my blood sucked out by vampiric mosquitos, splintered my toe open against a rock, got sunburn, and basically complained the whole time about how crappy it was to stay in a bungalow on a beach in a tropical fairyland.

We also went scuba diving. I can't really complain about that. Look at how ridonkulous!



If you still somehow doubt how pristinely virginal this place is, simply observe:



This is at Koh Samui, a small island that is swarming with Australian backpackers... it's basically Fire Island. Or, Vegas: everything that you can possibly spend $$ on, they charge you for:



That's a sign charging you about 30 cents (toilet paper is more) to pay for the privilege of going to the public bathroom.

SHOPPING! We went to Chatachuk (sp?), an epic outdoor flea market where they sell everything under the sun. I consider myself a voracious shopper, and this place was truly olympian. It's under a tin roof, so already you're baking to death, and everything is so dense that you literally can't breathe, plus whatever air you can breathe is 70% fried foods baking 5 feet away. There were several points at which I was certain I would vomit/pass out. But my brain was like "where else are you going to get vintage Vietnam shirts/shirts with stupid hipster logos and phrases on them for so cheap?? Where??!!" and I stayed the course. In the end I got a purple shirt that prominently features kittens playing with a ball of yarn, and of course an oversized pair of pajama pants that say MARIJUANA all over them in giant letters over the colors of the flag of Jamaica.

All day today we have spent basically inside a mall or our hotel. It's literally 5:49 in the morning. I'm tired and want to go to sleep but Simon is cracking a whip over my head to continue blogging/stay awake til 9 so I can sleep on my 14 hour flight to Europe.

Goodbye dear sweet Vachina!

You made Simon feel compelled to eat pig's brain on camera!

You made Cynthia sleep less than she does in New York when she's working for Irv Gotti (an average of 1.5 hrs per night)!

Your post schedule was more demanding than MTV Chi!

Your bug caused us a cumulative 14 hours of render time!

Your blog name was so great that you made a bar full of 20 year old Australian expats laugh for literally 5 minutes!

...goodbye and good morning.

strictly for my ninjas!

yo homies. have you ever been sitting at home alone, feeling blue? do you wish that you had that someone SPECIAL in your life? do you ever say to yourself, "damn, i wish i could see a lot more hot, fine, steaming, sizzling chinese women?" well, wait no more.

4 cities. 9 locations. 3 cameras. 1 common goal.

enjoy, my ninjas.

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shanghai, more like shang-bye

yo everyone! it feels like an eternity since I've posted one of these! we are currently in Bangkok, Thailand. Woody, after incessantly claiming that he has the stomach of a GOD has finally succumbed to the 'ol case of the runs. Poor Woods...everybody, please send him some love. (Note: Don't worry Lotus, Jerry, and Scarlett...we have fed him congee already!)

OK, so here's the scoop on what we've been up to! After you last left us we...

1. Went bowling in Shanghai. It was quite an ordeal as is all things when it comes to ex-pats in China. Yes, rolling balls at 10 pins lined up in a triangle was involved, but so was the shooting of a music video (which, yes, is about 5 days deep in post production). Woody is assigned to write up the details.

2. Went to another slammin' DJ party at Bon Bon where Woody's friends Adrianne and Adam spun the Chinese hits like it was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. I have no idea what that means, but the crowd did go wild when the DJ played "One More Time" by Daft Punk...which according to DJ Woodman is the best dance song ever.

3. We ate crawdads. i thought they were delicious, but others may have other opinions.

4. Tried to get authentic
and eat snake and frog, but I couldn't do it. They make you pick out the one that you want, and that freaked me out. Because, in the end, I would know that I was eating a frog that I actually pointed out, and that is just wrong.


5. Met this chick

For those of you that don't know her, she is Angel Tang of MTV fame, VJ extraordinaire for MTV Chi.

6. Speaking of fame, to top it all off, Woody did a photo shoot for SH magazineI'll be sure to bring home copies to everyone! (Sorry Woods, I had to!)

SUMMARY

Shanghai is an amazing city that really awakens at night. It also helped that we had the insight of some amazing people. Shout out to Adam, Chris, Mike, Candace, Ingrid, and the rest of the Shanghai crew (who are loyal readers of this blog now! HA!) When they throw a party, you better believe it's BANANAS!

In conclusion, Shanghai is pretty much America but with all Chinese people (and a surprisingly amount of white people), but it can be totally China if you want it to be (please see #4). Many people have said that Shanghai is like no other Chinese city, and now I see why. My favorite city so far!

We're coming to the end of our trip. It has been an amazing time. But stay tuned, we still have to tell you about Thailand and Ctown's run in with the "ladyboys!"

"Ladyboys, ladyboys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"

Quackers!

Here is the exclusive stand-up comedy stylings of Quackers, the headless chicken stand-up comedian. If you consider yourself a person of taste and refinement, do not watch. If you like puns and don't mind headless chickens, this is pretty much tailor made for you.

roller rink extended remix

here's some footage of the roller rink extravaganza -- sorry some of it is a bit dark but hopefully you'll get the idea:

Still alive -- harder than you think

I almost killed someone on the Great Wall in Beijing.



What you can barely hear over the music in the beginning is me saying, "I'm scared." The steps are of uneven height and the incline is ridiculously high. I put my water bottle in my bag so that I could hold onto the railing and take what I thought was going to be standard footage. When my arm squeezed against my bag, my water bottle got pushed out. There were a couple things to note from that footage: 1. The guy was really cool about almost dying. 2. Woody's first reaction was to laugh at the guy 3. I kept the camera rolling the whole time. Wow.

Number 1 and 2 lead me to believe it wasn't that serious, but I was really scared for about half a sec. Whenever someone does anything humiliating/bad, we've been calling it "The-person's-name Reel." For instance, this almost homicide goes on The Cynthia Reel.

The rollerskating party last night was a blast.



Woody is currently cutting together a rollerskating montage, so I won't go into detail, except to say it felt great to really go out for once! And with fun people who spoke English. It felt like home. Thanks to Adam and Adrian for inviting us! A lot of the people there were from Australia or Europe. I don't think they thought I could speak English at first.



PS. Rollerskating while dancing is hard, but try this:



That, my friends who are not familiar, is a toilet that is commonly found in China. One basically squats down like if you were out camping. Also, you need to bring your own toilet paper since they rarely provide it for you. We've been pretty lucky with finding regular toilets, and all of our hotels have them, but I still get pretty anxious if I have to go the bathroom while we are sight-seeing. The actual act is not that bad. It's more the smell. Also, the stalls rarely lock and they only come up to my chest when I stand, so there isn't really any privacy.

Now for some random highlights from Beijing and Shanghai:

- As Woody mentioned, he began heavily sniffing out bootleg dvds in Beijing. It is always a semi-shady industry. The first time, a man approached us while we are walking out of the Silk Market (underwhelming, btw). He took us to a nail/hair salon, and they rolled out a suitcase from a closed room.



- Here is a mobile bootleg music stand in Shanghai. Everything is still attached to the bicycle. Handy for a quick escape!



- While walking along a night market street in Beijing, I saw a Chinese sex shop for the first time. Apparently, 1977 Arnold Schwartzenegger is the epitome of manhood.



- Latest fashion report: You know what's so hot right now? Full face visors.



- Here is a late, but promised picture from the hot springs.



- Our first day in Shanghai, we went to YuYuan Garden. It is hard to find because they built a shopping labyrinth around it. It was built in the 1500s as a private garden, but is now open to the public as "an excellent model of classical Chinese gardening."



- I leave you with some behind the scenes footage. After our climb on the great wall, we ate at a restaurant at the base of the wall. The waitress recommended a dish that you can't find anywhere else, so we got it. It was a boiling cauldron of a whole chicken including the head. Our parents wouldn't have any issues with this, I'm sure, but being semi-vegetarian anyways, I was already not into eating it. It made Simon lose his appetite, especially after we spent 20 minutes coming up with puns and Simon shot "Quackers: The Headless Chicken stand-up comedian" voiced by Woody. This is prob the only footage you will see of it since no one has the stomach to cut it.



The chef is probably wondering what is wrong with us. Answer: as LCD soundsystem would say, we are North American Scum.

shanghai update

we've been in shanghai for 3 days now. out of all the places we've been to, this is my favorite. it's the most "westernized" but it's also not... you can see it in the architecture and in the way people dress and act.

Before I go any further I would just like to say that we finally found our "di tans" (street markets)... they're basically hole in the wall stores that sell crap. But unique, can't-get-it-anywhere-else crap. Not bad lacoste/polo ripoffs but stickers of robots and laminated cards of canto pop stars, stuff like that. we found this amazing place where these guys just had their boxes of toys spilling out into the streets, and it was like new arrivals day or something because they had a bunch of new boxes loaded with cheap, multi-colored toys:





Also you may wonder what happens to cute plush toys no one wants anymore... they end up in the CUTE PLUSH TOY GRAVEYARD:



I am now a firm believer that you need a friendly local in whatever area you plan on going to. without one, we were like our parents: going to temples, monasteries, etc. there's nothing wrong with that but our impressions of the cities we went to were very traditional and conservative.

anytime we've hooked up with a local (sylvia in HK, monica in guilin) our impressions of the city were greatly improved. I guess it's kind of obvious to say that now, but this point was driven home last night when we went to an expat party in shanghai. Adrian hooked me up with his buddy Adam, who throws this roller rink party where they play nothing but disco. Quick shout outs to Adam, Mike, Dan and Chris and of course Adrian for the hookup for a great time. The party was insano-vision. Adam was good enough to let me get on and at the end we switched off song for song. Here's a quick video of what it was like from my POV... the people stage right are rollerskating, you can't really see them b/c there's no lighting on the floor:



On an unrelated note, here's a video of me almost dying: