Three smells, five fillings

Another day, another bus ride -- this one a 10-hour marathon from the big station in Bangkok to Chiang Mai. It was a 2nd-class bus, so it stopped in every hick town along the way, which turned out to be a lot of hick towns.

I enjoyed getting out to stretch my legs and check out the snack shops, though. I'm a bit of a mochi fanatic so I was excited to see big stacks of it on offer.Naturally I couldn't resist the promise of three smells and five fillings.

They looked so cute in their many artificial colors, but they were a sad disappointment: crumbly and tasteless and generally having "more in common with sand than mochi," as Chad put it.

We stumbled off the bus dazed and hungry. The tuk-tuk driver cheered me right up, though. He had a dog who rode with him everywhere, snoozing right through hairpin turns and sudden stops.