i tried this with some cooked noodles. it definately acheived the same effect. made my bong nasty though... it was only a powerade bottle bong so i didnt care.
i want to get some small glass pebbles and fill a bong with that. that way you would see the smoke traveling through the pebbles and it would get the "labyrinth" effect that was mentioned earlier. maybe a petstore would sell little glass pebbles for fishtanks?