Been hanging out in Pai with a couple guys, one Thai, one Austrian. Pai's a sleepy little town in the northeast corner of Thailand that has somehow become a landlocked hippie beach paradise. There's some kind of fractal landscape of coffee joints, guesthouses and internet cafes, new spots keep appearing between places you've already seen. (And bars, of course, everywhere, not that you can't buy your Beer Chang from any corner store.)

Travellers that are opposed to Westernized, tourist-centric scenes obviously hate it. I find it hard to hate Pai, since it is a truly laid-back place, but it is a little weird - why come this far to get the same music, food and bar scene you do at home?

As I was mentally composing that smug little write-off, sipping beer under a thatched roof at my guesthouse, a track from Peace Orchestra's first album came on ("Mister Petz", a favorite.) The cognitive dissonance almost split my head open, that was exactly the song I wanted to hear.