My late father father was born in Bagansiapiapi, on the eastern coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Before he moved to Singapore around World War II, I would learn a lot of different tales about his early life.
I read everything I may find online about the Chinese people who lived in Sumatra in the early 1900s because the fragments I heard made me so fascinated.
I even inquired about our Indonesian prolonged family’s history, which I found to be fascinating.
My great-grandparents were born and raised in Indonesia, with roots in China. They could speak both Hokkien and Bahasa Indonesia well. In addition to fish, they made the majority of their income from the rubber plantation they owned.
What if I cycled alone from Singapore to Sumatra to attend my father’s place of birth despite all these tales? I never took any action on it.
Every day I thought about it, I became excited and the thought grew in my head.  ,
I knew I had to make it occur. And I made the decision to get big because I was going to get in Sumatra. Why not make the entire journey across the island and travel to Aceh’s Sabang Island, Indonesia’s northern point?
When I told my friends about my schedule to cycle piano from Singapore to Aceh, as expected, they were worried.  ,
They asked me:” Why not just stay to Malaysia? You do n’t know Bahasa Indonesia, what if you get lost? Do you even know what’s in Sumatra? You’re a smaller Asian person, who knows what could happen”?
Although I acknowledged their concerns, I still believed it was a significant experience to take on. Nobody more I knew was behind it, but I wanted to try it.