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Vietnamese is extremely difficult to pronounce. Not because of the 6 tones, but because they have so many similar sounds (for example several d's, several g's, 3 different u's, many combination vowels). And unlike in Chinese, where almost every word consists of 2 syllables, in Vietnamese almost every word consists of only a single syllable. And Vietnamese is unlike Western languages. Everybody can understand a foreigner speaking English, even if his pronunciation is terrible. In Vietnamese nobody will understand a word unless you get it just right. Made even worse by the fact that so few foreigners speak the language, so locals really do not know how to make it easier for the poor non native speaker. But knowing Mandarin, you have a very good basis and can learn it rather quickly. And, of course, learning to read and write Vietnamese is a matter of hours, instead of years. Just the rules of pronunciation, a few special characters, and you are set. You may not understand anything, but you can say everything you see out loud.
As to the second part. You might be able to learn a few simple characters, the numbers 1 to 10, for example. But if you know nothing about the language, the sentence structure, how could you go deeper? It wouldn't have to be Mandarin, every Chinese dialect (Cantanese, Hakka, Taiwanese, etc) uses Hanzi as its written form. Without sounds, how would you remember anything? Just remembering 5000 symbols without knowing how to form a sentence? Maybe someone with a photographic memory. And Hanzi is not something you learn and then you will remember them for the rest of your life. I know Taiwanese and Japanese who lived in the US, had no exposure to the written language for a year or so. And even they forgot a lot of the Kanji/Hanzi. As a Japanese you would remember the Hiragana and Katakana, but not every single Kanji you have ever learned.
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