Belitung was not a foreign place for me, as it is my mother's hometown and basically the place where she and my maternal family grew up in. My grandparents worked and lived there for years, before moving to Jakarta. My maternal family even speaks the dialect in their everyday life, so it was very easy to get to know this place through their stories and from relatives that visits our home in Jakarta. Negeri Laskar Pelangi or the Land of The Rainbow Troops has become tourist-famous ever since a movie came out in 2008. The movie, Laskar Pelangi that came to life by Indonesian movie geniuses Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza was based on a true tale book by Andrea Hirata. The movie began as an eye opener of how beautiful Belitung is, as part of the Bangka-Belitung Province, east coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.
