wet temples

we’d heard there were floods in northern thailand, but little did we know that the same thing was happening in cambodia:

in fact, just a stone’s throw from here, 200 tourists had to be rescued by helicopter from a flooded temple. did you hear that??? lifted by helicopter! holy crap.

but i’m getting ahead of myself here… just to make things clear, cathy and i have dubbed ourselves the BMs – budget masters. traveling for 2 months on a shoestring budget requires some self control, and we ooze it. no more $15 bus tickets, no way, you ain’t highballing the BMs again, i tell you what. this means that even sometimes we have to eat fast food instead of the local cuisine:

cathy is so happy. (truth be told subway was actually relatively pricey but we just wanted it sooo bad we declared a BM value hiatus)

i am so happy because i am getting such a good deal.

so after our amazing BM hiatus, we flew to phnom penh, cambodia. this is the first thing we saw and it kinda grossed us out:

we got high balled by the girl at the bus station, and bought $15 bus tickets to siem reap (where we now reside). later, in talking with a very nice man named mr. keo at a tourist agency, we found out the tix should have been more like $7. so now we are extra determined to get good deals wherever we go.

but we were only in phnom penh for a few hours – we gotta get to siem reap to see them temples of angkor wat! we figured we would sleep on the bus from phnom penh to siem reap… HA! stupid americans! the bus ride was like being on the back of a bucking bronco. we sat there and closed our eyes and slept for about 3% of the 6 hour ride, to arrive in totally flooded siem reap at about 2:30 in the morning.

but it ain’t no thang for the BMs sucka, we thrive on discomfort and deals. (i know it wasn’t a deal, shut up.)

so we’ve spent the last couple of days exploring angkor wat, angkor thom, and lots of other temples, and just had our minds blown by the totally radical scenery:

we were perhaps most fascinated by the places where trees decided to co-mingle with the temples. more down below.

such intricate detail, and such grand scale. literally awesome.

these little fellas kept trying to steal bananas from the woman selling bananas to tourists to feed the monkeys.

mother nature ain’t nothing to ef with.

i am so tiny.

this morning we got up at 4:30 to see the sunrise, cuz it is supposed to be one of those life changing-ly beautiful experiences. but oh you sneaky little cambodian clouds, you had something else in mind, now didn’t you:

“look, there’s the sun. isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

it’s been raining all day, so we’ve been lounging, surfing the intrawebs, watching rugby on TV, reading, and now i can say that i’ve also been blogging. well how about that. actually a ridiculously enjoyable and relaxing day. tomorrow we’re back to phnom penh for a night, then it’s off to vietnam. BMs locked and loaded.

love to you,

josey

p.s. here are some bonus shots from thailand that might make you wet yourself:

o poseidon, you french kiss so very well…

but don’t go getting the wrong idea, cuz im going home with this one:

holy crap, this freakin place is mind boggling.

baker boy, where the hell are you now???

railay, sucka. its techincally a peninsula on the west coast of southern thailand, but it might as well be an island, cuz its blocked off from the mainland by an awe-some wall of super steep rock cliffs that are impenetrable by even the mightiest tuk-tuk.

and what o what might i be doing down here in railay, you ask? stuff like this:

oh, and, i dont know, maybe this:

and these cats offered me a beer to come along on their boat ride, so what the hey, i obliged:

and even jumped up on that sexy rock myself:

and then i jumped off it and dont pick on me just cuz im plugging my nose it hurts when water gets up there:

tomorrow we go to phuket, to singapore, to angor wat. we party hard.

ooh ooh OOH, and if’n you’re curious, check out what my lady says.

kisses babies,

❤ josey

sorry pal, tights pants are not allowed

at least, not if you wanna get in to see the emerald buddha. (btw – who in the heck looks like that in tight pants?) 

well shit, that rules out just about everyone i know in san francisco. but you can bet your tight ass that it doesn’t rule out me, no frikkin way am i wearing tight pants here, no no NO. why? cuz it is hot as a muhfuh! and hot pants don’t allow my legs to breathe. and my legs GOT to breathe, otherwise i am just a cranky little booger. and nobody wants that.

but this whole tight pants ordeal doesn’t matter a lick, cuz we didn’t go in to see the emerald buddha. we deemed it an overpriced ‘wat’ – temple – and instead opted for wat pho: the temple of the reclining buddha. and good god, this buddha was fully reclining and fully HUMONGOUS.

and being here got me thinkin – how did you get so chill, buddha? so i asked him…

me: damn buddha, how’d you get so chill?

buddha: i had to work hard at that shit j, it didn’t come easy. 

me: yea, i hear you sat underneath a tree for a long ass time, pondering life, searching for the truth of the universe, eventually attaining enlightenment. is that true? didn’t you get super bored? 

buddha: kinda. but i snuck away to check my twitter feed every now and again. 

me: and you didn’t eat the whole time? what the hell man, you got all this awesome grub that your peeps throw down! you didn’t sneak a little curry every here and there?

buddha: of course i did, but don’t go telling anyone, you’ll ef up my steez. and you know i had to get lifted every once in a while with my main man:

me: damn buddha, i dig your style.

buddha: word.

here are some other tidbits from the past few days’ adventuring:

kind man feeding a squirrel.

bucket full of snakes for sale.

leftovers.

forgot to do his crunches.

alright honey babies i gotta bounce now – c dog and i are on our way to get our breakfast on. then we’s gonna get rubbed down in the proper thai fashion, then meet up with our bud kelly to get into some good ol fashioned trouble. sunday we take off on an overnight train down the coast to go chill style on some islands. 

and don’t you go worrying about our breadbond – every day i daydream about slashing bread loaves and the look on your face when you get a brown beauty hot outta the oven. i’ll be comin back, i promise.

loving ya from afar,

josey

burnt to a crisp and on my way

holy crap, that there burn mountain festival sure is a hoot. here’s some of the things i did and looked at:

the awesomest fire shooting octopus the world has ever known!

the awesomest fire shooting lady the world has ever known!

the awesomest fire shooting baker the world has ever known!

we washed off our boring normal color and this is what we found:

but enough about that – i gotta get ready for south east freakin asia. my sweet lady cathy has dreamed up a ton of awesome plans, and by golly, we’s gonna do em! here’s the rough itinerary:

• flyin into bangkok (that’s in thailand, in case yr a wondrin)
• hang there for about a week, resting up from the flight, ripping around on motorbikes, sneaking around corners finding the yummiest grub we can, until next weekend when we’s gonna hit up the Chatuchak market (35 acres, 5-8,000 stalls, around 200,000 people HOLYCRAP) and maybe buy a small fuzzy animal 
• head south for some island hopping beach shenanigans
• back up the coast and over into cambodia where we plan to get our minds fully blown by Angkor Wat
• over into Vietnam where we will find the best food in the whole dang country and share it with you, as well as spend a few hours in, oh, i don’t know, maybe, just maybe, THE BIGGEST CAVE ON THE WHOLE FRIKKIN PLANET – BAM –

• up the coast, following our whimsy, sleeping on a boat in Ha Long Bay
• eastward bound into Laos, where we shall find ourselves a jungle adventure like no other 
• into northern Thailand, where we plan on hangin with some folks on a farm who just happen to have a wood fired oven (my lady is a miracle worker, pure and true)

and that is that my dogs. the next time you hear from me i will most likely be over there. wish me luck. oh yeah, and don’t get into trouble while i’m gone now, ya hear? actually, i take that back, get into some awesome trouble, just don’t end up in jail. rather, just make sure you’re out by the time i get back. (yes rafi, i am talking to you.)

love love LOVE

josey

p.s. i couldn’t help but show off this pretty baby i made the other day… o me o my!

gone til november, i’ll be gone til november (overdue like a muhfuh)

o me o my, the internet really effed me on this one, and this note that i meant to post the morning of my last bake didn’t go through! internet i love you so, but sometimes you are a finicky butthole. alas, here’s that one:

i pulled those last purdy loaves outta the pizzaiolo oventhis morn, with the helpful hands of my boy josh, and then promptly shed atear… then i started prancing around the place singing lady gaga, cuz holy crap,the adventure begins now. YESYESYES.

i’m leaving SF in a few hours, and i am rip roarin and readyto partay like there isn’t a tomorrow. oh but there’s a tomorrow alright… about75 of em, spent wandering all over this awesome world. i’m outros doggies.

sooo, this is the last post that will have anything to dowith bread for a while (and this one is barely about bread). but this is thefirst post of the rest of my life. (what?) i don’t know, shut up.

so if you like, you should check in here once in a while,cuz i plan on sharing lots of tidbits of my journeys over the next couplamonths. and you can maybe shoot me an email once in a while to say, “yo bakerboy, i miss your bread, and i am happy you’re having fun, and my life is like(here’s where YOU fill in the blank)… check ya on that day of thanks, my dog.”

i won’t see ya for a while (AKA i will be back and in action by Thanksgiving at the latest) but i’ll be thinking of you, andbringing you along with me.

GOD does this have to be so dramatic? i mean, you’recoming back in a little while, why don’t you just shut up and go already?!?

okay, okay, okay i’m going, don’t get all meanface on me! til we are in each other’s arms,once again and forever, frolicking in rainbows and moonbeams,

❤ josey