In front of the shopping mall, a lot of Becak drivers were waiting for customers

Becak drivers, who used to wait for customers only at the edge of a market in a residential area in Jakarta, parked their bicycle cab right in front of a big shopping mall here in Cirebon and waited for customers with a big smile. The man in this photo with a mustache was one of the people waiting in front of such a mall. It seems to be a common practice here for local people who have finished shopping to take a bicycle cab called a Becak.

In contrast to the many Becak in the city, I rarely see drivers of car-dispatch apps such as Grab or Gojek here. It seems like a lie that I saw so many drivers in Jakarta. According to Grab's website (as of December 2020), the city of Cirebon is included in their service area. But I didn't see any motorbikes with either the Grab logo or the Gojek logo on them.

The reason for such a difference might be the difference in the penetration rate of smartphones between Cirebon and Jakarta. In Jakarta, it was commonplace for each person to have a smartphone, but this does not seem to be the case here. The man who smiled and gave me a thumbs up in this photo also did not seem to have a smartphone. He wasn't reading a book or a newspaper, he was just squatting and waiting for a customer to come.