In Bangkok, freshly killed beasts arrive in the markets at around 3 a.m. It’s common for groups of vendors to club together and hire jobbing butchers who prepare the carcass for them. I recently went to a market in the early hours to watch a butcher prepare a whole cow in less than an hour. It’s a challenging situation in which to take photography; poorly lit with florescent lights, hot and with a lot of deft hook and knife action. When the job is done the meat is shared between the vendors who sell it from around 5 a.m. This is a daily process, with the exception of Buddhist days of worship or wan phra when the butchers don’t work.