He takes a pessimistic position towards his time in Vietnam: he is rejected and ridiculed by the natives, fleeced by government officers, and has a violent encounter with disgruntled men after they discovered that he is a Viet-kieu. He returned to his motherland for several reasons, but mainly to resolve his past and to help him allay the pain he felt upon his ‘sister’s’ suicide.Ĭatfish and Mandala is a smooth mix of travelogue and memoir: Pham merges stories of his family’s escape and settlement in America with steep mountain climbs on his bike, the reunion with several family members and meeting friends of different nationalities while on his bicycle his own family’s complex and painful background with the harsh livelihood that the Vietnamese face presently. Pham’s narration touches on many aspects of his life: his personal experience growing up as a Viet-kieu (a Vietnamese who grows up in another country), his confusion over his bi-cultural nature and how people express their feelings concerning the Vietnam War upon him the instances of self –hatred, besides instances of cultural grace and bewilderment.

There is a chilling account of a jade polisher, who kills himself due to the depression of not being received into a host nation (Pham, pp. His depiction of his father in a concentration camp (he was freed before officers found out he was a propaganda officer) finds support in the Indonesian refugee imprisonment camps. The flee by boat is close and fascinating. Throughout the book, we get a glimpse of Pham’s earlier life.

So is the self-criticism for partaking in such ventures. The dangers of these odd journeys are remarkable, but within the levels of standard travel writing. He flies to Saigon, then moves to Hanoi and bikes back. He stays there for three weeks and after failing to find a cheap boat ride to Japan, takes a plane to Japan. This brings him to the end of his US leg of the journey. He begins the expedition at the Gold Gate Bridge and bikes north along the US Coast, as he moves along, he meets other travelers encounters the steep climbs into Oregon and Washington, and finally reaches Seattle, Washington. The book is narrative in nature and begins when Andrew, fed up with his job as an aerospace engineer in San Francisco, quits his job, takes his bicycle and sets off on a journey that takes him to his native country: Vietnam.

Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham