First Sunday Night At Thamrin Non-Cash Culinary Center 10

Thamrin 10 (Photos: Diah Ayu Wardhani / VOI)

JAKARTA - The former parking lot on Jalan MH Thamrin, Thamrin 10 was officially transformed into a culinary area. Yesterday, DKI Governor Anies Baswedan inaugurated it with the concept of a culinary area with cashless payment methods.

The land area of 8,000 square meters was transformed by Perumda Pasar Jaya into a culinary area by cooperating with small and medium entrepreneurs. A total of 54 UMKM stands were prepared to sell various foods at this location. In addition, there will be seven food trucks to add food items at this location.

"Initially, this place was used as a parking lot. We will turn this place into a third space for citizen interaction, especially for parks and culinary facilities," said Anies, Saturday, December 22.

"Hopefully, this place will become a place for people to interact. There is also a place to appear, for cultural arts performances," Anies added.

Thamrin 10 is open from 10.00 WIB to 22.00 WIB. We visited Thamrin 10 at dinner time. The scattered lights in all directions made this open area bright.

Dining spots in Thamrin 10

Once there, the inscription "Thamrin 10" was plastered in front of the area. Behind him, we are greeted by a giant Christmas tree. This tree is composed of 8,000 bottles of used mineral water decorated to resemble a human form, complete with a face and colorful cloth as clothes.

Thamrin 10 only provides parking for motorbikes. Meanwhile, visitors who bring four-wheeled vehicles are asked to park in the buildings around Jalan MH Thamrin.

In the middle of the area, there is a music stage to entertain visitors. The atmosphere was getting lively. Regularly, there will be acoustic music performances from various bands. This music stage starts from 18.30-22.00 WIB every Monday-Friday and until 24.00 on Saturdays and Sundays.

Thamrin 10 also provides clean and paid toilet facilities. Trash cans are available in large quantities. Supposedly, there should be no reason to litter. All UMKM booths along with chairs and tables for diners at Thamrin 10 are white. However, most of the places to eat here are not equipped with shade tents.

Non-cash

When ordering food, visitors to Thamrin 10 can make payment transactions using non-cash payments from Bank DKI, namely JakCard, JakLingko, and JakOne Mobile. There is a cashier who can top up these non-cash cards with a minimum balance of IDR 10,000.

If visitors do not have a non-cash card from Bank DKI, they can buy a JakCard for IDR 50,000. The card contains a balance of IDR 30 thousand, and IDR 20 thousand as deposited balance and cannot be used.

If you want to have a card that serves a refund system, visitors can buy a JakOne card. The difference with JakCard, this card cannot be used for mass transportation payments such as TransJakarta, MRT and LRT. JakOne is also available in a mobile application. Payment is through a scan process (scan).

Even though it carries the concept of non-cash payment, including GoPay, OVO, Dana, and LinkAja, in fact there are still many food stand managers who do not provide complete non-cash payment machines.

Expensive food and rainy rains

For food, Thamrin 10 provides quite complete types of food, from heavy meals, snacks, to various cold drinks. We met Anita (23), a visitor. To us, Anita said that the price of food in Thamrin 10 is still too expensive.

"I bought chicken noodles for Rp. 30 thousand and cold drinks for Rp. 25 thousand. This is really expensive for the size of MSMEs. This price is equivalent to eating at the mall," said Anita.

Before long, it started to rain. The visitors scattered looking for shelter because their place to eat was not covered by a shade tent.

The atmosphere of food tents in the rain

The performing band on the music stage stopped their playing, even though there was still one hour left for musical entertainment. They immediately covered the loudspeaker so that it wouldn't be damaged by rainwater.

This culinary area does provide a 3x3 meter tent for shelter. However, there were only four of them, so visitors who did not find shelter in the tent had to take shelter on the edge of the food stand.