The Only Answer
When it is so hot, so hot that your clothes stick to your person, so hot that you linger near the open refrigerator door, so hot that you feel like you need a shower immediately after having taken a shower, so hot that you can’t even remember what it feels like to be comfortably chilly, then a cold beer or cocktail is the only answer.
Geoff invented a drink in Malaysia which involves a double shot of dark rum and a colourful interlude of bright green guava juice. When trying to think of a name, he remembered a drink that everyone seemed to really like from the hotel he stayed at in Senegal, called the ‘Mandingo’. It seemed like a lyrical sort of name to apply to a drink and so the rum-guava cocktail was thus named. Now look that up on Wikipedia. Too late, that’s the name of the drink, and for vacation-happy-hour, it was always the right answer. When not drinking at home, we did well to enjoy the upstairs open-air patio of a relatively swanky spot whose name I forget, but where they made an appropriately swanky Negroni.
Shortly thereafter, we were forced to drink Singapore Slings. Well, maybe not so much forced as obligated; we were in Singapore for a few days – a short side-journey from Kuala Lumpur – and had no choice but to try the eponymous drink. It turns out that though very pretty, I don’t like Singpore Slings. Too sweet, I prefer a drink as bitter as my soul.
Singpore, however, is a place I could get used to, but more on that later.