Country Bumpkins arrive in the big city

When we land around 12am in Chengdu, we head for the Sheraton and proceed to get clowned by the desk clerk due to our Guilin-esque questions. Do you have a night market? Do you rent bikes? He was basically like, due our advancement beyond being savages, we have been able to build structures called malls. I believe when we asked for bikes, he was like, oh motorbikes? And we were like, no. Just a bicycle please, har har. (adjust rice hat and pull on suspenders). He was like, no. No we don't not rent bicycles. And I think that you will find our prices are very expensive. (no - he did not go that far) When we checked out the next day, he left us his cell phone in case we wanted more info. How nice!

The night we landed, there was also a thick fog and stench in the air. Apparently, every year Chengdu burns rice because there is too much. We happened to come when they started it. It was like being trapped in a chimney with the top closed.



We went to the tech mall, which is 6 floors of privately-owned electronic counters put side by side. You haggle with several different ones until you get the price you want, although they also seem to be in some sort of cohoots. We only made it to 3 floors, with the 3rd floor only being for bathroom sakes. We left with headaches from the flourescent lights, bartering and using Simon as human collateral. Here's a video to give you an idea of what it's like. Try to find the human baby on the floor near the end of the video:



We went to the Panda conservatory. We had to go before 10am because they feed them in the morning and sleep for the rest of the day. Our bus was coming at 7:30am. We all woke up between 7:20 - 7:27am. I got a call from a sweet lady telling us that the bus was here. Woody, however, got a call from the driver yelling at him to get our a**es down there. Woody came into my room to light a fire under my butt, but his POV is of me slowly putting in my contacts to the tune of "Sunday Morning" by Velvet Underground. We missed the 7:30am bus, but the driver came back for us. Here's another teaser to the ultra-cute montage:



We also went to this tourist trap temple mall. It's built to look like an old temple, but it's only a couple years old. It's filled with several shops and local artisans. Woody and I became obsessed with these two magnets that make a cricket's-mating-call noise when you throw them into the air correctly. Throughout the day, Woody was developing new sounds that it could make. By the end of the night, Simon was about to have an aneurism.



More on Chengdu Temple and the city to come...

Chinese TV

Yesterday was our "Unemployed Day". We spent the day wandering aimlessly around Chengdu. Now I appreciate the fact that we met Monica in Guilin... having a local on your team is a definite plus, because without one to guide you around, show you where to eat, take you places etc, we're basically the equivalent of a bunch of Chinese people going to NYC and looking at Ground Zero, taking pictures at the Statue of Liberty, and eating at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.

In Chengdu our BFF is the Fromer's travel book we have, which has on more than one occasion made us the target of clowning. All the locals and cab drivers were snickering at us so we beat a hasty retreat to the internet cafe where we can, duh, blog more!

On our day off yesterday we went to eat Tibetan food for lunch. Not to hate on the cuisine, but our dining experience was less than stellar. For one thing, it was like 90 degrees outside and the A/C wasn't on in our part of the restaurant, and all the food we ordered was steaming hot. So already we're mega lethargic. Then we look over across the table and there's this monk and a bunch of hangers-on eating so we figure, hey these guys know what's going on, and we order the same tea they have. WRONG. Note for the future, "Butter Tea" tastes exactly as "Hmmm... that sounds interesting, I'll order it and expand my horizons, here it is, MMMMM looks good, now to taste it YEEEARRRARRTGHHH! Christ what is this!" as it sounds. Also there were homeless people constantly coming up to the window and literally just standing there for 5 minutes at a time staring at you to give them money. Grimsville.

That was pretty much it. We watched TV in the hotel (see some channel surfing examples below), and generally just slept and wandered in a daze. Today we VOW to not stay in an internet cafe all day!

team vachina takes a day off

Due to a recent increase in production and the local Internet cafe asking us not to come back (because we spent 8 hours there and only bought 1 iced coffee), team vachina is taking a break for one day to gather our thoughts and regain our sanity.

As you can see from the post production schedule, we still have plenty to do:



Please read our new blogs below. We will be back on the air in 24 hours. Thank you for your patience as we try to better serve you.

Teaser for the upcoming "cutest montage ever..."

I left my heart in Guilin

After hopping through customs with my sprained ankle and then arriving into the 1980's Alphabet City of Guilin, I became scared that my limping would attract predators like the laws of nature seen repeatedly in "Planet Earth." Here is what the neighborhood looked like, except imagine people holding meat cleavers.



We were too scared that shooting broll of the neighborhood = a meat cleaver to the face.

The first night I stayed up editing the music video, only taking "render naps" and wonder-lusting after my past, more agile self. The next day was the epic boat tour, and I was delirious. On the van ride home, I woke up disoriented and ended up yelling over the heads of 5 German tourists to Woody, "What's going on?!"



They have an underground "Little Hong Kong" labyrinth-like shopping mall where all the prices are like H&M / F21. Whilst shopping, we realized that Woody and I had opposite problems. I am too big for Guilin and Woody is too small. Here is a pic of me in standard issue Girl slippers from a hotel we went to check out.



The fashion here is pretty progressive. There are a lot of cute kids here, and the guys have Japanese anime haircuts.



Moped culture is pretty huge here as well. They even invented a poncho for half-man, half-moped.



We went out the past couple nights, which meant going to neon-lit clubs. However, their dance floors are limited to 7 people. Instead, people keep to themselves at their own tables, head bob and play local games whilst surrounding themselves with Avril Lavigne.



We had a late night flight to Chengdu, which we were running late for, but still decided to drop everything for:



I wear mine now when I have a bad face day...



Bye Guilin! (fade out Enigma's "Age of Innocence" which should be played over this blog entry)

vachina.blogspot.com just got sponsorship!

We just got official sponsorship by one of America's leading clothing companies. Check out our national ad campaign on the back of the Onion or Vice soon!

chengdu...more like cheng-don't

The title implies that you shouldn't visit Chengdu. But I assure you
that's not the case. I am just bitter about Chengdu right now because as
I was taking a picture of a dude getting his hair cut on the sidewalk, he cursed at me and instructed me, Mr. T style, not to take pictures of him and if I continued to do so, he would pick me up and throw me in the river. I stopped.

Anyway, our first night we stopped at the Sheraton in Chengdu, and I
proceeded to be laughed out the door when I offered them $520 for a room
they wanted $1100 for. i asked Woody if he could go and try and he
said...

"I...I...I c-c-can't."

So as we hightailed it out of there, the manager (Jay Li) came running out
to us and offered us $800 a night. I scoffed at his "little too late"
offer, laughed wildly in his face, looked him straight in the eye, and told him...

"We'll take it!"

Money well spent, in my opinion, because we later [TEASER ALERT] shot their gorgeous lobby in our next installment of our music video series.


Cut to next day, I'm a skeleton again, because Woody and Cynthia want to
get external hard drives (im pian) for all the content that we are producing. Yo, try bargaining and haggling for electronics in Chengdu and you'll know what hell on earth is. I played the hard drive pimp/gimp/god, and pitted Woody's price against Cynthia's price, even offending a lady by telling her "not to take advantage of us." In the end, team vachina got ultra cuteZ0R 120 GB hard drives for ultra low prices (said as the salespeople laugh themselves silly all the way to the
bank.)



Now we are at the traffic hotel, and you guessed it, the only reason we are here is because across the alley is this place...




We've been gone 10 days now. Feels like hardly nothing and an eternity all at once. The only thing that I know at this juncture is that I love being amongst people that look like me. Will that change? Only time will tell. Thanks for reading. Until next time...

lions, tigers, and cows, oh my

Whew. This one took a while to get out, but here's the backstory:

In Guilin, they have a place called Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain. I had heard that at this "mountain" you can see a tiger fight a cow. Woody wanted to see the tiger fight monkeys, but, alas, no such luck. However, before we got to the main event, they warmed us up with this...



Much love to DJ Roctakon for the grrrrreat soundtrack. You can check out his blog here.

So now that you have watched the warm up video, without further adieu, ladies and gentleman, children of all ages...the moment you've all been waiting for. I present to you:

COW vs. TIGER!!

guilin giveaway!

Watch and you will see what you can win! Trust me, it's amazing.

cynthia vs homeless

The other day we were wandering around aimlessly, and all the stores blast music really loud to attract customers. Interesting sidenote -- Avril Lavigne and the Backstreet Boys are HUGE here, to the exclusion of all else. Gwen Stefani and Justin Timberlake are like unknown jokes.

Anyhow, Cynthia saw this woman dancing outside a celphone store that was blasting music, and she assumed this woman was a free and liberated woman, a creative soul, a fellow artistic kindered spirit. So Cynthia decided to go and dance with this woman, only to discover halfway through that she was a crazy homeless woman.

The line between artsy and insane is getting thinner and thinner, people!

fiery hot nighlife

we all went drinking dancing last night too. Let me just tell you that clubs in China (or I guess guilin at least) play the WORST music ever. its really horrendously cheesey, like you're in a neverending Sprite commercial. The beat is the same for all of them, and everyone spins off CD Dj setups. Also, there is apparently this drinking game you play thats kind of like Rock/Paper/Scissors. You have to be a character, either Cop:



Robber:



or Damsel:



The Cop beats the Robber for obvious reasons, the Robber beats the Damsel for obvious reasons, and the Damsel beats the Cop (presumably because of her feminine charms). You also have to switch characters to the beat of the music until someone wins, and whoever loses has to drink.

Never leave Guilin!

we've got a pretty comfortable schedule going on here in Guilin now. It breaks down basically as: wake up, eat food, wander streets aimlessly, go to Little Italian Expat Cafe and blog for 3 hours, eat dinner, go back to hotel to edit so that the next day, we have something to post on our blog.

Blog!

Yesterday however, we broke this routine by going to the Bear/Tiger/Zoo house. Yea, we saw a tiger hunt/kill a cow, ain't no big thing. Simon's in the midst of cutting the most epic video of all time for it. He even made me download a bunch of music for the edit.

I dont really have too many pictures of the zoo, but we saw 3x "performances". The first one was kind of a second rate barnum & bailey thing where they have tigers in a cage and this guy makes them do humiliating nonsense like roll over and pretend to wave to the audience. It was actually completely mesmerizing, because I kept waiting for the tigers to go feral and attack their human captors. Alas, it never happened, but what we saw instead were the glum, defeated faces of all the zoo keeper/entertainers. Man, they were like teenager carnie runaways with these "what have we got to look forward to" looks on their faces. Husks!

The second performance was a continuation in the theme of animal humilation. we saw bears walking upright banging drums, monkeys riding bikes, and of course a monkey on top of a pole riding a camel. All of this was narrated by King Awesome:



Also they let us go up real close to the tigers with tongs of meat and feed them through a chain link fence. Not exactly super-secure. While shooting Simon I almost get my hand ripped off!



so now all the foreplay is over and we get to the main event: TIGER VS COW, SON! Basically they let a tiger out of a cage into this small fenced-in field, and he chases a cow for 5 minutes, catches it, and bites the cows throat. the end. you kind of feel dirty afterwards for watching it, like "who is the TRUE monster here" while "Man in the Mirror" plays in the background. I wont give you any footage of the chase (Simon's magnum opus is on the way), but here's a snapshot of crowd reactions. Dont let the expressions fool you, Cynthia was actually wringing her hands together in quiet desperation and Simon was actually laughing like the Joker for 15 minutes:

peace out guilin

CONGRATULATIONS to Patrick Hosmer of New York, NY! He is the winner of the HK t-shirt as referenced in a previous blog. He responded in a record 37 minutes after original posting. And his reason for wanting the prize?

"Because I want it."

That's good enough for me! Your prize is on the way, sir!



Stay tuned for the next prize giveaway...it's going to be a doozy (ps...sending the darn prize cost 3 times more than the actual prize itself!)

so, as our time in guilin is coming to a close, we find ourselves with 3 hours remaining in the day...so we are back at our local spot...blogging! everyone here in guilin is super nice, although whenever I speak to any of them they all seem to be wanting to get out of their "sleepy little town." I can definitely relate. What started out as a one day visit became a 5 day mind explosion of information, and now I feel ready to experience something else, something new.

Small town living is nice, but I could never live here. We did, however, get a glimpse of what guilin once was...just across the river and down the street, away from tourism. The torn down buildings, the dirt, the grime, laundry in the windows, people sitting out front, bare chested, smoking the day away. And if they are REAL lucky, they have a couple of their buddies over and play mah jong or cards in the street. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. This is their life.

Makes me thankful for mine.

Peace out Guilin. Thank you for being so hospitable and giving the Chinese a good name!

Next stop, Chengdu!

Hong Kong Recap

I thought all HK ads made Asian guys look effeminate.










Then to my pleasant surprise, I saw this:



HK was a good segway between America and China. It was like NY, but with Asians. We got to practice some Chinese, but everyone also spoke English. We had the creature comforts of home, but also got used to being amongst fellow Asians and trusting Asian food.



Here is a pic of my new phone for those of you who wanted to see:



During this phone excursion is where Simon and Woody coined the phrase "Cut to I'm a skeleton." ie This is taking so long, I'm dead.

After the tech mall, we walked through the Mong Kok night market, aka the "ladies market" because most of the goods are targeted for ladies. Especially these sexy-time underwears for your men, ladies:



The next day, we had a couple hours to kill before we had to catch our plane, so Simon and I shot a music video:



I ripped two slits in my jeans under the buttal area during this video from climbing on top of some walls. Not only did I have to keep wearing them for the rest of the afternoon, but the only other jeans I brought still had Repulse Bay all over them. So I had to wear the Vachina jeans, if you will, for the whole next day in Guilin before we could figure out how to do laundry.



Speaking of Repulse Bay, I loved it. It was like the Malibu Beach of Hong Kong. It was a nice break from the hectic city. But the sand is actually a variety of little rocks, so I had to walk old school binded-feet style. Oh snap!



I leave with one of the latest pieces of HK gossip. Woody's friend Sylvia translated the tabloids for us. A famous actress was caught in a 3P, which is the term for a threesome based off of video game terminology, ie 2P is 2 player. Apparently, the younger pic of her in the lower corner is pointing out how she used to be more attractive. Ouch! Blunt Asians. Also, the pics of the 6 men under her face represent her dating history.

mu qing jie

and now for a happy mother's day greeting from vachina.blogspot.com (in our mother tongue, no less!):

look at me, i'm huck finn

I haven't shaved since I left America. My head is fuzzier than it's ever been. My face is exploding because of my oily American in China skin. I saw a tiger beat down a cow today. China is pretty amazing....not quite as amazing as this blog, however!


SO, apparently, Woody has been promising videos, and I don't want to be the one to blow his vachina street cred, so here is me singing "Muo Li Hua" on the Lijiang river.



Shout out to my mom on this mother's day for teaching me those wonderful songs. "Mei you ma de hai zi shian ghun cao."

random guilin thoughts

1. guilin has effectively trumped all of our expectations. the people here are insanely nice and everything is remarkably clean. all our preconceived notions/nightmares about diarhea, getting robbed etc were completely unfounded. in fact, they even vaccum seal all the silverware at restaurants!



2. Mcdonald's = fine dining experience. you know how in NY, the Mcdonalds are always the refuge of the homeless/crazy? not so here in guilin... all the kids go to Mcdonalds like it's mecca, and the place is immaculate and spotless. here is a photo of a typical mcdonalds promotional poster:



here we have a typical guilin cow, steroid'd up and taking it to the hole. MOOOve aside! all other players COWer in the face of this offense!

3. cute trumps all. you could make a mathematical equation that breaks down as this:

CUTE > EVERYTHING ELSE

practicality goes straight out the window in Asia. Form will beat function every time, visible in basically any consumable product there is. Here, for example, is Johnny Law in his off-time, surrounded by literally a wall of cute:



TEASER! today we went to "Xiong San"...the bear and tiger mountain village:



Basically, Simon heard via some Aussie expats that we could pay money and watch a tiger slaughter a cow. When he heard this, we became singleminded in purpose and thought, our every action motivated by one guiding principle: WE MUST SEE A TIGER KILL A COW (and of course document it for our blog). Video to come, son!

Lao Fu Zi says...

Yo, check it! Check out what some old friends say about Hong Kong.