You could see some of the despair setting in over the last few seasons of his show on CNN. Basically, he had been so many places in the world so he was revisiti

You could see some of the despair setting in over the last few seasons of his show on CNN. Basically, he had been so many places in the world so he was revisiting a lot of places and was basically in mourning over the fact that they’re all the same now. Even places like Hanoi that shouldn’t be. There’s a lot of mourning over “the old ways” over those last few seasons. If you watch some of his early shows, he was enchanted by the street food scene in Asia. But places like Bangkok and Shanghai cracked down hard on unlicensed street vendors over a decade ago, and the places that were lively environments in the mid-2000s have been gone for a long time. Anecdotally, I tried to find street food in Shanghai and the only places were a few vendors next to the train station. I was told by the guide I hired that there really wasn’t much anymore and that western diets were all the rage among the under-40 crowd. In its place were sterile food courts with bright signs and cartoon mascots.