Monas offers visitors cheap and festive distractions

Monas offers visitors cheap and festive distractions

By Risbiani Fardaniah

JAKARTA (Antara): "On a Sunday I went downtown with my pa. We took a special two-wheeled buggy and I sat up front. I sat beside the coachman who was pretty busy, steering the horse in the right direction, hey!

"Tuck, tick, tack, tick, tuck, tick, tack, tick, tuck, tick, tack, tick, tuck ... tuck, tick, tack, ... the sound of horseshoes on the ground."

Naik Delman (buggy riding), the popular children's song of the 1970s, probably does not appeal to children born in the 1990s in Jakarta because, in general, they are unable to imagine what a two-wheeled buggy is now that it is a rarity in the metropolis of Jakarta, the country's capital.

Lucky you, though, some delman (buggies) still operate around National Monument (Monas) Square, Central Jakarta, especially on public holidays and weekends. They are decorated with multicolored pennants, with coachmen donning a unique Betawi costume usually worn by local martial arts hero Abang Jampang. The costume is a black, loose long-sleeved shirt and black, loose trousers with a piece of batik cloth slung over the shoulder. The coachmen are always ready to take you on a short ride around Monas Square for only Rp 5,000 to 6,000 per group.

Gently jolted by the movement of the horse, you can enjoy the breeze that softly blows through the leafy branches of the trees planted around the square, in the middle of which stands the National Monument with its flame of gold on top.

Protected from the heat inside the moving buggy, you can feast your eyes on a great variety of snacks usually sold along the sidewalks in Jakarta such as toast, mung bean porridge and various kinds of sweet compote of mashed sweet potato mixed with flour stewed in coconut milk, and fast foods such as rice with several kinds of side dishes, fried rice, porridge, local style soup, etc.

You simply make your choice and need not worry so much about how much you must pay because the prices are generally lower than those in cafes or restaurants. Some sell their food and snacks from a cart while others from commercial vans. The food is delicious, but some of it could be prepare under more hygienic conditions.

"I like to eat here because, besides all the delicious food, I can also take my family to enjoy the fresh morning air in the center of Jakarta, a very noisy area with a high level of pollution during working hours," said Budi Sukoco, who took his wife and his young child to eat chicken porridge in the parking lot of Monas Square.

According to Sukoco, an employee at a private commercial bank, almost every free day, particularly Sundays, he and his family look around for tempting snacks in this area or in Senayan, after doing their morning workout. He prefers Monas Square, he said, because it is located in the center of Jakarta.

Therefore, he said, he hopes that Monas Square, which is crowded by sidewalk vendors on holidays, will remain as such in spite of the rapid development in Jakarta.

Anyway, he added, Monas is where one can find recreation cheaply, festively and completely.

City dwellers bored with visiting malls and superstores may also find Monas Square an alternative and interesting site for shopping on their days off.

There, amid food sellers, there are vendors of clothing, handicrafts and daily needs -- all offered at slightly lower prices than those set by the producers.

A holiday is always a day of good fortune for the vendors in Monas Square because on such a day the area is more crowded with visitors than usual.

"On a holiday I can make an average of Rp 350,000, while on weekdays I make a mere Rp 20,000," said Yasir, who sells leather, wood and ceramic handicrafts and has an outlet called Ilham Souvenir in Sumur Batu, Central Jakarta.

Unlike other vendors who operate only on weekends and on holidays, Yasir and three of his friends offer their wares almost every afternoon in the Monas Square parking lot. They are there from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. He said that on the recent Idul Adha (Muslim Sacrifice Day) holiday he made Rp 1.7 million, a record sales figure for him. On that day many people bought fans and pieces of leather on which holy verses from Koran are engraved.

Yasir, who used to sell newspapers, acknowledged that he had a lot more customers, foreign and domestic, in Monas Square than he did in Sumur Batu.

Yudi Hartono, who sells chicken porridge, said that customers usually came to buy his porridge between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. on a holiday. "Close to midday there are usually fewer and fewer customers," he added.

Hartono can sell an average of 100 bowls of porridge at Rp 3,000 each and hundreds of bottles of soft drinks on a holiday.

He claimed his mother was the first person to start a mobile food stall in the Monas area in the early 1970s. At that time she chose a site in front of Eldorado Theater. Several years later, more and more people set up the same business, selling different kinds of food such as rice with chicken and local style chicken soup.

At that time, he said, sidewalk vendors were not officially permitted to do business around the Monas area and his family was often engaged in a hide-and-seek game with security and order officers.

"I'm glad now because a special site in Monas has been allocated for sidewalk vendors. The potential for business is good here," he said, puffing on a cigarette.

He noted that the Monas area is a strategic and potential area for small-scale traders. "In fact, sidewalk vendors will always comply with the regulations of the Jakarta administration as long as the management is good and fair," he said.

Now, he added, his family owns four mobile stalls. They can be found in the Monas and Senayan areas on holidays and on weekdays in Benhil, Kelapa Gading and in front of St. Theresa Church in Sabang.

Coachman S. Hidup, a native of Jakarta, said that every day he could earn Rp 60,000, of which Rp 20,000 in rent goes to the buggy owner.

"It's better than just doing nothing," said Hidup, moving his hand up and down to keep the horse moving. Once in a while he shouts a little to push the horse.

On slow a day, he often takes home only Rp 10,000. Competition is very keen now. When he started in the buggy business around the Monas area two years ago, he said, there were only four other people doing the same thing. Now, he added, there are close to 100 two-wheeled buggies with coachmen hailing from surrounding areas of Bekasi, Tangerang and Bogor.

Hidup, which literally means life, is not alone. That business is getting more and more difficult to run because of stiff competition is a fact of life also encountered by other people running a business in the Monas area. However, it is the stiff competition that has made them more creative in luring customers.

Tuck, tick, tack, tick, tuck, tick, tack, tick, tuck ... the sound of horseshoes on the ground. The horse keeps moving, pulling the buggy around the monument with a gold flame on top.