Okay so the towel discourse is over, this one just works. The Babolat Medium is 100% cotton terry, 19.7 by 35.4 inches, which is 50 by 90 centimetres — big enough to actually dry a face and a forearm at a changeover, small enough that it lives in the side pocket of the bag instead of eating it. Terry, not microfibre.

It drinks, which in Yangon humidity is the only specification that matters. That is the entire brief and it delivers on it, and I am not going to invent a technology story for a rectangle of cotton.

You will use it everywhere from a humid afternoon by the river to an indoor hall back home in January, and by the way, it is also perfect for a long slow tea at a street stall with a plastic stool and no shade, which is the actual local sport and takes hours.

This is the colonial-era grid, and the light does something at six that no filter has ever matched. The Secretariat is a Victorian brick complex of arcades where Aung San was shot in 1947, and it is enormous and red and half-swallowed by trees. The Strand Hotel of 1901 puts a white facade and teak stairs right on the river.

And the setting here is unreal.

The High Court on Pansodan Street is red brick under a clock tower, and St Mary's Cathedral finished its brick vaults and rose window in 1899. This is giving decayed grandeur and it is not performing for anyone, which is exactly why it works.

"Cotton terry, no logo doing the heavy lifting. Let the six o'clock light on Pansodan Street have the shot."

Buy on Amazon