Two for Adventure

Some people golf, take fishing trips or watch soccer on TV together. As for my father and me, we traveled the world.

Dad took me everywhere, from Australia to the Americas to South Africa. In our travels, he instilled in me a love of adventure, of different cultures, of history, nature and beauty.

On our first big trip overseas, we went to Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Next it was Turkey, Greece and Egypt. Roaming through the markets of Istanbul, I felt like the protagonist of a storybook about exotic faraway lands. I got to run around the ancient ruins of Greece and crawled through the inside of pyramids. They were adventures most kids could only dream of.

Traveling with my father, I experienced a lot of firsts. There was my first helicopter ride over the waterfalls in Chile, my first scuba dive at the Great Barrier Reef, my first camel ride through the deserts of Egypt. While other parents were busy cautioning their children against too daring activities, my father gently nudged me with encouragement from behind.

When I was 14, while visiting my sister in Perth, Australia, we drove to the desert with the bright idea of going skydiving. Dad said he was too old to jump off a plane but he didn’t mind us giving it a try. Before I knew it, I found myself strapped to an instructor, sitting on the floor of a single-engine propeller plane with no door (!), climbing to 14,000 feet. I wasn’t even sure the plane could go that high without falling apart so by the time I had to jump I was more than happy to do so. At least I had a parachute!

Don’t get me wrong, my father was no Indiana Jones. He was your typical Chinese-Indonesian businessman. At the dinner table all he talked about was work. He used to spend Saturdays at the factory and was hardly home. But when we traveled he was different. Going to new places reawakened his spirit for adventure. I got a glimpse of his younger self, when he used to pack up his gear and go hunting for the days back when most of Java was still a jungle and panthers roamed free in the wild.

My father took me places others rarely went to. Once we did a trip along the Silk Road to see the end of the Great Wall of China. This was back in 1995 when the highways were not yet built and people in the region still lived off the land. We drove for three days out of Lan Zhou to see the crumbling clay wall in the midst of the desert — not at all like the grand stone wall pictured on postcards.

Along the way we ate with the villagers in their homes. They were so excited to have visitors they would roast whole goats for us. I’m not sure if it was the fact that we were eating in small huts in the middle of nowhere or if memory romanticized my experiences, but, accompanied by fruit tea poured from teapots with meter-long spouts, they were some of the best meals I have had in my life.

I will never forget being presented with the goat’s head at the end of the meal with everyone staring, expecting us to have the first bite. A gesture of honor, I was told. Goat eyeballs and brains were not exactly my idea of a delectable dessert. I think Dad took the bullet for both of us on that one.

When he wanted to quit smoking, Dad decided to go to a place so foreign he wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for cigarettes. So we headed for Vienna, Budapest and Prague. Mind you, we did this trip before the European Union existed. Eastern Europe was still uncharted territory for the rest of the world then.

We had no plans. We would land at the airport, find a decent hotel to stay in, rent a car, and see how it went. I’m not even sure if there was a Lonely Planet book out on some of those places yet. We ended up eating at local restaurants recommended by our driver and getting lost in villages where they had probably never seen an Asian person in their whole lives. To this day this is my favorite way of traveling. No tours, no plans, just go.

Our last trip was to India when, typical of my father, we traveled from New Delhi to Agra and Jaipur, and back in the span of five days. The businessman that he was, he liked to do things at a fast pace. We rented a car, hired a tour guide and packed in all the major sites in those five days.

My most memorable moment of the trip was roaming the grounds of the Taj Mahal with Dad who was carrying his bright leopard-print umbrella. Apparently that umbrella was the only one left in the supermarket when he purchased one to bring for the trip. I think we got more stares than the Taj Mahal itself that day. Ever the eccentric, he decided to give all the local tourists a show and waved at everyone who looked his way.

Now my father is 70, he and I might never travel like this again. He speaks of going to see the poorest province in rural China, but I am unsure when this will happen. After a certain age, it is difficult to go off the beaten track and give up some of the comforts of home. But I will always have the memories of our past travels.

We Chinese-Indonesians are not known for our sentimentality. There are certain things we just do not express to one another. So I am writing it down instead. Because I want him to know that I appreciate all the things he has shown me.

Traveling represents a more innocent time for me, when Dad was Dad and I was his little girl, before adulthood arrived and both he and I had expectations of each other we could not meet. The most priceless things he taught me were to be brave, to not be afraid of things unknown and to always have an open mind to explore new things and new places. My memories of my father and daughter will always be of us traveling in planes, trains, cars and buses, off on an adventure.

+ Tessa Wijaya

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