It will always be lao lao to me

Our final night in Viet Nam was an experience. Mum and I took a bottle of Dalat red wine and the small amount of Vietnamese currency we had left, and went to a small restaurant in the alleyway our hotel was on.
These, tiny hidden restaurants have been my favourite place to eat in Ha Noi, one in particular was a breakfast noodle soup shop that the hotel staff took me to. It was down an alley so small that I would never have ventured down it on my own, but the tiny kitchen inside served great noodle soup for about 60c.
The street that our hotel was on was lined with half a dozen small restaurants all selling the same thing - deep fried crumbed meat and fresh vegetables, all cut into small pieces and dipped in a sauce.
The food was great, but the highlight of the evening was the company. Mum and I noticed that most of the other customers were drinking, both in shots and out of glasses, an amber coloured drink that the restaurant served in plastic water bottles. Before long, three men sitting at a table nearby offered us shots. Now I'm not sure what exactly it was, but it tasted very much like lao lao - the rice wine of which Niels and I drank way more than we wanted to in Laos.
To return the favour, we gave the men shots of our red wine, which they seemed to enjoy about as little as we enjoyed their rocket fuel.
Nevertheless, the exchange of drinks continued until the men left (leaving us with their unfinished bottle). Then another table invited us over for more shots, then, we got talking to a young couple sitting at the next table (this couple were the first people who actually spoke any English). They told us that they lived quite far away, but had come to this restaurant because it is famous for its food and that we were the first foreigners they'd ever seen there. Feeling a little chuffed by all this (or maybe just all we had drank) we headed back to our hotel to prepare for the 5am bus that was to take us to the Chinese border the next morning.