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.