HO CHI MINH CITY -- For all the horrors of Southeast Asian colonialism, we've somehow romanticized the idea of the 5pm cocktail hour: safari-suited revelers trying to alleviate the humidity with a stiff gin-and-tonic in the former British and Dutch enclaves, or something rum-based in French Indochina.
While such traditions soon melted away in the wake of independence -- there are signs of its reemergence, in the best possible way.
