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Overland: Remembering Southeast Asia
Winner of the 2018 National Indie Excellence Award in New Adult Non-Fiction . Part travelogue, part time capsule, part confession..." Overland transports us to 1975, when an aspiring Chicago journalist traveling Solo While Female set out on a path traveled by thousands of adventurers in the 60s and 70s in search of enlightenment, cheap thrills, and free love.
From Bali to Batu Ferringhi, from Bangkok to Burma and beyond, in the wake of war and the shadow of colonialism, the story recalls the challenges of travel in an Informationless Age, framed against a mind-bending backdrop of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. Rollicking yet reflective, it's a digitally remastered blast from a place and time past, when the ultimate measure of cool wasn't where you were from, but how far you'd come.
Book club Overland frames distinctly feminine coming-of-age themes within a historic, societal, and political context that is sure to stimulate spirited debate. Our Reading Guide provides the prompts.
From Bali to Batu Ferringhi, from Bangkok to Burma and beyond, in the wake of war and the shadow of colonialism, the story recalls the challenges of travel in an Informationless Age, framed against a mind-bending backdrop of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. Rollicking yet reflective, it's a digitally remastered blast from a place and time past, when the ultimate measure of cool wasn't where you were from, but how far you'd come.
Book club Overland frames distinctly feminine coming-of-age themes within a historic, societal, and political context that is sure to stimulate spirited debate. Our Reading Guide provides the prompts.
- GenresTravelNonfiction
284 pages, Paperback
Published May 4, 2018
About the author
Caryn Green
2 books7 followersCaryn Green, citizen journalist is an award-winning essayist, author and indie publisher whose legacy media career spanned decades, from broadcast to metro dailies to monthly magazines. Her articles on topics ranging from travel, lifestyle, and the arts to history, religion and the environment have been published in numerous defunct and still-extant periodicals and websites.
Overland:Remembering Southeast Asia, her first book won the NIEA Award for New Adult Non-Fiction in 2018. A short story, 'Commitment,'was anthologized in Meaningful Conflicts, which won the Foreword Indie Silver Award in 2023.
Her new release, Better Angel is a 'magical memoir' fact/fiction mashup that recounts a transcontinental train trip in the autumn of 2017 accompanying her most revered ghost.
Overland:Remembering Southeast Asia, her first book won the NIEA Award for New Adult Non-Fiction in 2018. A short story, 'Commitment,'was anthologized in Meaningful Conflicts, which won the Foreword Indie Silver Award in 2023.
Her new release, Better Angel is a 'magical memoir' fact/fiction mashup that recounts a transcontinental train trip in the autumn of 2017 accompanying her most revered ghost.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 3, 2018
I lived vicariously through the author’s detailed descriptions of the colorful free spirits and other real “characters” she met traipsing around Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Burma, to mention a few, while traveling on the Overland Trail in 1975/76. I laughed and cried as I read her accounts of the people and places and my envy surfaced for never having the courage to partake in a journey like this.
Ms. Green’s writing style hooked me immediately and the suspense built. I read very few travel memoirs as I’ve found some to be quite lackluster. This was not the case with Overland. Ms. Green’s story is sweet, poignant and captivating. She painted a picture of this period in our history in a very personal manner. I savored Overland and wish it were longer.
Ms. Green’s writing style hooked me immediately and the suspense built. I read very few travel memoirs as I’ve found some to be quite lackluster. This was not the case with Overland. Ms. Green’s story is sweet, poignant and captivating. She painted a picture of this period in our history in a very personal manner. I savored Overland and wish it were longer.
March 11, 2018
This is an interesting and engaging read; the story of a 20-something girl traveling the route from Bali to Bangkok on her own meeting new travelers and locals everyday, remembered 40 years later.
June 7, 2018
“You’re not really American till you leave home,” one of the author’s traveling partners says on a stop in Malaysia.
In a story that begins when the author reminisces over found forty-year-old international mail and photos, Caryn Green recounts part of a life-changing journey to Southeast Asia during 1975-76.
Green, an award winning essayist and journalist who’s covered topics from travel, lifestyle, and the arts to history, religion, and the environment for various media, turned toward book-length work with her memoir. Overland is her first book.
After losing a promotion at work, Green says, at her first career job out of college during the tumultuous mid-nineteen-seventies, she took time off for a journey of self-discovery. Overland: Remembering Southeast Asia is part travelogue, part time capsule, part confession. “Time off” is a euphemism for quitting her job, emptying her savings, and getting on a plane without her usual exhaustive tendency toward detail. But with her guitar and music.
She went first to Japan to visit family friends, where unbeknown to her, a significant family event occurred. The reader learns of this tragedy months later when Caryn finds out through delayed mail. And that delayed land mail speaks to the era: a different time without the instantaneous communication of this present generation. Then, touring foreigners lusted after news from “home,” wherever that was, which could only be learned through the newest visitors, eagerly sought and befriended on sight.
As Green took the Overland, or Hippie Trail, starting in Bali in November 1975 and ending in Bangkok the next February, she grew stronger in self-reliance, and self-respect. Indeed, “What started as a quest for my identity became a lesson on how others saw me,” she shares. “I evolved…from child to adult. I guess we don’t realize we’re coming of age while it’s happening, it only occurs to us in retrospect.”
The Trail led through Bangkok, Burma, Java, Thailand, even at one point into the jungle and civil war, meeting a Naga head-hunter (“It was banned in 1962,” says one of her companions, “but no one’s really sure if it’s being enforced.”) The head-hunter didn’t induce as much fear as a later crazy marriage proposal.
One aspect of Green’s heritage she never lost was her Jewishness. She connected with a few other Jews on the Trail, and made no subtle references to her meeting with several German tourists, a Russian Jew, and Jews of other cultures, as well as the reactions of her friends and companions when they learned of her ethnicity.
Interspersed with commentary of “on the Trail” are tidbits from her home in Chicago nearly 40 years after the journey, as Green checks in from the future. She also makes several references to later revelations about people she met, which I liked and thought worked well in her narrative. She became more comfortable sharing stories of her upbringing with her traveling companions, thus sharing her motivation for self-discovery in a natural manner. Using her musical gift was also a door-opener. The people she met along the way helped shift her perspectives in profound ways. Sometimes it was a simple complaint session on all the things they missed back home: democracy…lots of free stuff…clean public restrooms, safe drinking fountains… Sometimes it was homesickness. “The relationships are so accelerated,” Green says. “On the road…our emotions are so intensified…. Funny, when I first started traveling, all I noticed was how different everything seemed. Now I’m so much more struck by the similarities.”
Green returned to Southeast Asia to retrace her steps and “fill in blanks, facts and connections that had eluded me.”
Overland is a time-travelogue of two generations past, of a growing-up time during an era of crazy revolution in a place where time stood poised and uneager to change. I appreciated reading what might best be described as creative, narrative non-fiction as Green recreates conversations and scenarios from journals and photos and letters. This is an era most people might like to forget, but Green captures the importance of remembering the moments that shape us. Readers should also be prepared for raw situations of sex, language, and drug use. A thoughtful guide for discussion topics is included.
In a story that begins when the author reminisces over found forty-year-old international mail and photos, Caryn Green recounts part of a life-changing journey to Southeast Asia during 1975-76.
Green, an award winning essayist and journalist who’s covered topics from travel, lifestyle, and the arts to history, religion, and the environment for various media, turned toward book-length work with her memoir. Overland is her first book.
After losing a promotion at work, Green says, at her first career job out of college during the tumultuous mid-nineteen-seventies, she took time off for a journey of self-discovery. Overland: Remembering Southeast Asia is part travelogue, part time capsule, part confession. “Time off” is a euphemism for quitting her job, emptying her savings, and getting on a plane without her usual exhaustive tendency toward detail. But with her guitar and music.
She went first to Japan to visit family friends, where unbeknown to her, a significant family event occurred. The reader learns of this tragedy months later when Caryn finds out through delayed mail. And that delayed land mail speaks to the era: a different time without the instantaneous communication of this present generation. Then, touring foreigners lusted after news from “home,” wherever that was, which could only be learned through the newest visitors, eagerly sought and befriended on sight.
As Green took the Overland, or Hippie Trail, starting in Bali in November 1975 and ending in Bangkok the next February, she grew stronger in self-reliance, and self-respect. Indeed, “What started as a quest for my identity became a lesson on how others saw me,” she shares. “I evolved…from child to adult. I guess we don’t realize we’re coming of age while it’s happening, it only occurs to us in retrospect.”
The Trail led through Bangkok, Burma, Java, Thailand, even at one point into the jungle and civil war, meeting a Naga head-hunter (“It was banned in 1962,” says one of her companions, “but no one’s really sure if it’s being enforced.”) The head-hunter didn’t induce as much fear as a later crazy marriage proposal.
One aspect of Green’s heritage she never lost was her Jewishness. She connected with a few other Jews on the Trail, and made no subtle references to her meeting with several German tourists, a Russian Jew, and Jews of other cultures, as well as the reactions of her friends and companions when they learned of her ethnicity.
Interspersed with commentary of “on the Trail” are tidbits from her home in Chicago nearly 40 years after the journey, as Green checks in from the future. She also makes several references to later revelations about people she met, which I liked and thought worked well in her narrative. She became more comfortable sharing stories of her upbringing with her traveling companions, thus sharing her motivation for self-discovery in a natural manner. Using her musical gift was also a door-opener. The people she met along the way helped shift her perspectives in profound ways. Sometimes it was a simple complaint session on all the things they missed back home: democracy…lots of free stuff…clean public restrooms, safe drinking fountains… Sometimes it was homesickness. “The relationships are so accelerated,” Green says. “On the road…our emotions are so intensified…. Funny, when I first started traveling, all I noticed was how different everything seemed. Now I’m so much more struck by the similarities.”
Green returned to Southeast Asia to retrace her steps and “fill in blanks, facts and connections that had eluded me.”
Overland is a time-travelogue of two generations past, of a growing-up time during an era of crazy revolution in a place where time stood poised and uneager to change. I appreciated reading what might best be described as creative, narrative non-fiction as Green recreates conversations and scenarios from journals and photos and letters. This is an era most people might like to forget, but Green captures the importance of remembering the moments that shape us. Readers should also be prepared for raw situations of sex, language, and drug use. A thoughtful guide for discussion topics is included.
December 23, 2019
A few weeks before reading this book, I had responded to a request of a blogger about what was one of the more spectacular train journeys I’d made. I listed several including the ride across the island of Java in Indonesia, from Jakarta to Jogjakarata. Shortly afterwards, someone else echoed my comment about the Indonesian train ride being one of her favorite. When I looked at her profile, I saw that she had recently published this book on her journey across Southeast Asia. I was drawn in and ordered a copy. I’m glad I did.
Caryn Green was a 24 year old woman from Chicago, who after a failed marriage, decided to hit the trail, traveling to Indonesia and then making her way overland from Bali to Jakarta, on to Singapore and into Malaysia and then to Bangkok and around Thailand. She even made it into Burma. My trip didn’t take me into Burma, as I hung a left in Thailand and headed into Cambodia and then Vietnam, before running north and traveling on to Europe. That wasn’t an option for Green, as she did her travels in the winter of 1975-76, shortly after the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam. Those countries were definitively off-limits at the time. It was an interesting time to travel as the recent American presence in Asia was evident and American travelers were often berated and drawn into conversations that they didn’t particularly want to join.
Green does a wonderful job describing her travels and the people she meets. She mostly hangs out with fellow travelers, many from Australia and Germany, but does meet many natives along the way, especially those who provide housing and services for those traveling. She is taken with the children and who always seem open to a welcoming face. I was also impressed with how much of the languages she learned, more than just being able to say thanks or to ask for the bathroom. Some reading the book might be taken back by how honest she was about her relationships with a few of the men she met along the journey (although nothing too graphic) as well as how she occasionally enjoyed drugs. She did draw a line at harder drugs, mostly smoking hash. Reading this, I found myself wondering if the airport in Indonesia in 1975 had large banners in several languages reading, “death to drug runners,” on the concourse as you entered the country as they did when I traveled.
Perhaps the most exciting part of her trip comes at the end, when she travels with a guy filming a documentary on the Karen resistance in Burma. The Karen are tribe in northeastern Burma who have long wanted to separate from the rest of Burma. They passed over into Burma in a remote part of the country, from Thailand.
I felt a little cheated that she was able to take a ferry from Jakarta to Singapore. Back then, more of them ran. When I made the trip, it was only running once or twice a week and, even then, didn’t go to Singapore, but to an island south of the city-state, where you had to take another ferry into the city. The other place that we both spent time on was on the island of Penang in northern Malaysia. While I had a Malaysian blogger friend to show me around, she hung out in beaches on the north part of the island where lots of young people gathered. Today, these beaches have been “gentrified” as places where lots of wealthy Arabs hand out.
Green is Jewish, which provides an interesting point of view for the variety of religions within this part of the world. She spends Christmas in Singapore, a city that has Buddhist, Muslims, and Christians. Sshe’s drawn into the celebration by hanging out with a retired FBI agent on Christmas Eve. When she leaves Asia, after three months, she flies on to the Middle East in order to spend time in Israel.
In ’75, Green journey was the end of what had been known as the “Hippie Trail” which lead overland from Europe to Southeast Asia. Interestingly, at that time, the trail overlanders were taking went south because of the political issues of traveling across the Soviet Union and China. These days, those making such a journey as I did in 2011, travel further north through China and Russia in order to avoid places like Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. It’s interesting how things change.
This book is a quick read, and I enjoyed it because of the comparisons I was able to make with many of the places we both travels (36 years apart). I would recommend the book for those who have experienced this part of the world. Another book that deals with overland travel in Asia during the mid-70s that I found enjoyable is Tiziano Terzari’s "A Fortune-teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East." Terzari is older and essentially a war correspondent without a war after the fall of Saigon.
Caryn Green was a 24 year old woman from Chicago, who after a failed marriage, decided to hit the trail, traveling to Indonesia and then making her way overland from Bali to Jakarta, on to Singapore and into Malaysia and then to Bangkok and around Thailand. She even made it into Burma. My trip didn’t take me into Burma, as I hung a left in Thailand and headed into Cambodia and then Vietnam, before running north and traveling on to Europe. That wasn’t an option for Green, as she did her travels in the winter of 1975-76, shortly after the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam. Those countries were definitively off-limits at the time. It was an interesting time to travel as the recent American presence in Asia was evident and American travelers were often berated and drawn into conversations that they didn’t particularly want to join.
Green does a wonderful job describing her travels and the people she meets. She mostly hangs out with fellow travelers, many from Australia and Germany, but does meet many natives along the way, especially those who provide housing and services for those traveling. She is taken with the children and who always seem open to a welcoming face. I was also impressed with how much of the languages she learned, more than just being able to say thanks or to ask for the bathroom. Some reading the book might be taken back by how honest she was about her relationships with a few of the men she met along the journey (although nothing too graphic) as well as how she occasionally enjoyed drugs. She did draw a line at harder drugs, mostly smoking hash. Reading this, I found myself wondering if the airport in Indonesia in 1975 had large banners in several languages reading, “death to drug runners,” on the concourse as you entered the country as they did when I traveled.
Perhaps the most exciting part of her trip comes at the end, when she travels with a guy filming a documentary on the Karen resistance in Burma. The Karen are tribe in northeastern Burma who have long wanted to separate from the rest of Burma. They passed over into Burma in a remote part of the country, from Thailand.
I felt a little cheated that she was able to take a ferry from Jakarta to Singapore. Back then, more of them ran. When I made the trip, it was only running once or twice a week and, even then, didn’t go to Singapore, but to an island south of the city-state, where you had to take another ferry into the city. The other place that we both spent time on was on the island of Penang in northern Malaysia. While I had a Malaysian blogger friend to show me around, she hung out in beaches on the north part of the island where lots of young people gathered. Today, these beaches have been “gentrified” as places where lots of wealthy Arabs hand out.
Green is Jewish, which provides an interesting point of view for the variety of religions within this part of the world. She spends Christmas in Singapore, a city that has Buddhist, Muslims, and Christians. Sshe’s drawn into the celebration by hanging out with a retired FBI agent on Christmas Eve. When she leaves Asia, after three months, she flies on to the Middle East in order to spend time in Israel.
In ’75, Green journey was the end of what had been known as the “Hippie Trail” which lead overland from Europe to Southeast Asia. Interestingly, at that time, the trail overlanders were taking went south because of the political issues of traveling across the Soviet Union and China. These days, those making such a journey as I did in 2011, travel further north through China and Russia in order to avoid places like Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. It’s interesting how things change.
This book is a quick read, and I enjoyed it because of the comparisons I was able to make with many of the places we both travels (36 years apart). I would recommend the book for those who have experienced this part of the world. Another book that deals with overland travel in Asia during the mid-70s that I found enjoyable is Tiziano Terzari’s "A Fortune-teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East." Terzari is older and essentially a war correspondent without a war after the fall of Saigon.
April 7, 2019
I won this book in a giveaway. This memoir of the author's travels through Southeast Asia in the 70's was engaging. Caryn Green's writing style felt like listening to an old friend tell you about her adventures. It made me wish (again) that I had been able to travel like this when I was young and free (before husband, kids, granddaughter, and dogs). I think that travel back then, before smart phones, computers, and wifi, had a different feel and sense of freedom that would be hard to recreate today. Throughout the book she takes pictures and I really wish some of these had been included in the book. I think that would have enhanced the story.
December 8, 2025
Caryn Green’s Overland: Remembering Southeast Asia takes the reader back to a time when young women felt enabled to adventure forth to the world carrying a backpack, usually with a friend or two, staying not in comfortable hotels but in ultra-low-budget camps and hostels, living cheap and light, experiencing the culture of each country from the bottom up. What made Ms. Green’s journey—and her splendid memoir about it—even more remarkable is that she embarked on her walkabout by herself. How she picked up friends and colleagues along the way is an essential part of this story, and another insight into this period (1974) in our shared history.
This story is well told on every level. It reads fast and easy because each scene is built around conflict, not just a linear travelogue, and because Ms. Green expresses herself so elegantly in easy to understand, precise, and moving prose.
The author’s journey began in Bali, the southeastern tip of Indonesia, and stretched north and west to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Burma (today’s Myanmar), jumping from island to island to mainland by short boat rides, following the migration of thousands of other young people, mostly from North America and Europe, experiencing southeast Asia after the end of the Vietnam war. At each stop, Ms. Green learns the local customs and acquires a functional vocabulary in the native language, and she makes her was among the other young ex-pats in the area. She recalls the people and events with clarity and focus, and she immerses us in a revolving cast of characters, some friends, some mentors, some threatening, some lovers.
I enjoyed this book on several levels, first, as a Vietnam veteran who experienced southeast Asia in a very different way, but also as the parent and grandparent of daughters and granddaughters who came of age in much different and perhaps more confining times.
I heartily recommend the book for its engaging storytelling, its in-depth portrayal of another place and time, and its exploration of a young woman’s journey to independence and self-sufficiency.
This story is well told on every level. It reads fast and easy because each scene is built around conflict, not just a linear travelogue, and because Ms. Green expresses herself so elegantly in easy to understand, precise, and moving prose.
The author’s journey began in Bali, the southeastern tip of Indonesia, and stretched north and west to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Burma (today’s Myanmar), jumping from island to island to mainland by short boat rides, following the migration of thousands of other young people, mostly from North America and Europe, experiencing southeast Asia after the end of the Vietnam war. At each stop, Ms. Green learns the local customs and acquires a functional vocabulary in the native language, and she makes her was among the other young ex-pats in the area. She recalls the people and events with clarity and focus, and she immerses us in a revolving cast of characters, some friends, some mentors, some threatening, some lovers.
I enjoyed this book on several levels, first, as a Vietnam veteran who experienced southeast Asia in a very different way, but also as the parent and grandparent of daughters and granddaughters who came of age in much different and perhaps more confining times.
I heartily recommend the book for its engaging storytelling, its in-depth portrayal of another place and time, and its exploration of a young woman’s journey to independence and self-sufficiency.
September 22, 2018
I loved being taken on this literary journey back in time and into (for me) far-flung places. I liked how the author put things into perspective, comparing the then and now. I won the Kindle version in a Goodreads giveaway and I'm very glad I did. My thanks to the author. An enjoyable read.
July 22, 2018
Kept my interest throughout
December 11, 2018
Interesting and well-written
August 4, 2018
It will take awhile to get all my thoughts together to write a review but I will. I loved this book. A voice from my generation, a kindred spirit... anyway like I said I will get a review together... but if you are on the fence about reading this book fall over into the READ IT camp.
here are just a couple quotes:
"What is it with this guy? We’ve spent every waking moment together since we met, told each other our life stories, even skinny-dipped, and the whole time he’s maintained this earnest, sincere, Boy Scout demeanor while I’ve been harboring impure thoughts about how nicely he fills out those Levi 505s."
"I shower under a chilly drip while Bill rolls a couple doobies for the road and pores over The Book the way one might stand at an open refrigerator, waiting for something new to appear."
I saved more. This is simply just great writing.
here are just a couple quotes:
"What is it with this guy? We’ve spent every waking moment together since we met, told each other our life stories, even skinny-dipped, and the whole time he’s maintained this earnest, sincere, Boy Scout demeanor while I’ve been harboring impure thoughts about how nicely he fills out those Levi 505s."
"I shower under a chilly drip while Bill rolls a couple doobies for the road and pores over The Book the way one might stand at an open refrigerator, waiting for something new to appear."
I saved more. This is simply just great writing.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews