We visited a grocery store in Badajoz with a prosciutto-slicing station. I still can’t decide if seeing the slicer in action helped me see where my food comes from. The store had giant hyper-clean aisles and smelled of cleaning solvents. Nobody spoke and social distancing was in full effect. The Spaniards were dressed in their usual black, somber leather. And here’s this woman in the center of the store with her metal cuffs, working like a surgeon on a pig’s leg. I felt like I was in a video for some 90’s industrial band.

In Lopburi, a town north of Bangkok, some parts of the city are controlled entirely by monkeys. Now nothing against the monkeys, but they have really let the place go to hell. The infrastructure is crumbling, law and order is absent, and the citizens crap wherever they please.