Yesterday picked up a Chinese visa in Bangkok and boarded an overnight bus north to Chiang Mai - there are many, many buses in my future. The bus left from the backpacker hub of Bangkok; it was a sleeper, which in my case meant a seat that reclined close to horizontal but also yo-yoed up and down with every bump in the road. Our drab, industrial transport was passed on the road by dozens of airbrushed, spiffy-looking luxury buses decorated with the kind of colored lights beloved by Thais.

Twelve hours later, the bus stopped outside of Chiang Mai before loading us onto minibuses. These deposited us in front of a guesthouse (a typical harmless scam, we'd been told we were headed to the center of town) that tried to hook us as soon as we touched pavement. I and a kid from Mexico grabbed our bags and walked five minutes to the center, before going our separate ways.

Over coffee and breakfast I decided to give myself a night in a bed before tackling the next seven hours of bus ride to the Laos border. Before finding a guesthouse I found an Internet cafe. Using the adrenaline left over from arriving in a new city, I finally finished revising my resume and writing a cover letter for a non-profit job I might apply for. Two days to decide.