Is my Vietnamese really that bad?

This morning I was in the center of District 5 (Cholon) to replace the seat cover on my motorbike (Smokey used it as a scratching pad).  As I was waiting, the owner of the shop started speaking with me.  He kept asking many questions and I just could not recognize the words.  They were very strange Vietnamese words.  Finally he walked away after I responded "Khong Hieu" to him.

About 10 minutes later, his son started speaking to me in English.  He asked how old I was and I answered back in Vietnamese.  He then turned to his father and spoke a different language.  I then realized that the owner was not speaking to me in Vietnamese at all.  The son later told me that he spoke Chinese to me.

What a relief, maybe my Vietnamese is not really that bad after all.  The question is, though, why did the owner speak to me in Chinese?

:-)

A very interesting day in Saigon...