The girl wearing a shirt with Betty Boop printed on the chest was holding a hammer

Walking through the town of Pyay, I came across a girl sitting in the doorway of a house with walls woven from bamboo. She looked to be about ten years old. In her right hand, she held an improbably large hammer, as if taking a break from some weekend carpentry, and gazed at me intently. Her cheeks and the area around her eyes were lightly smeared with thanaka, the traditional cosmetic of Myanmar, its pale pattern lending her expression an extra touch of mystery. Across her chest, her shirt bore an illustration of Betty Boop. The American-born, classic cartoon character smiling from the doorway of a bamboo hut in rural Southeast Asia was wildly out of place—though if “out of place” is the lubricant that keeps the world in balance, perhaps this, too, was perfectly natural.

Pyay is known for the ancient ruins scattered along the Ayeyarwady River, yet on the outskirts, bamboo-walled houses and earthen-floored kitchens remain in everyday use. In Japan, a hammer usually means carpentry nails or a weekend DIY project, but here, the same tool suffices for fixing a kitchen shelf, mending gaps in a bamboo wall, or just about anything else. Bamboo is light and soft, so an iron hammer might seem like overkill—but when it comes to tools, availability matters more than choice.

The girl rested the hammer on her knee and continued to stare without speaking. I had no idea what to say to her. All I could do was turn over a few useless facts in my mind: that Betty Boop was born in America’s Prohibition era, or that thanaka serves as both sunblock and makeup. It’s moments like these—absent from any travel guide—that linger unexpectedly in one’s memory. Whether such memories will ever be of any use is, of course, another matter entirely.