What Is A MOCAK?

Yesterday afternoon when my driver came to pick me up for lunch, he told me that there was a power outage at home. Therefore, I was not able to heat up the food from the fridge and had to buy some take-away food. I wanted to try this Mi Aceh (Aceh noodles) from a nearby shop, so we drove there. It was pouring. When we got to the Mi Aceh stall, we saw a MOCAK (sounds like "mow-chuck") or Motor-Becak (Motorized-trishaw).

The Mocak belongs to the Mi Aceh guy. He is from Aceh (northern Sumatra) and claims that he brought the mocak to Palembang by bus. It was dismantled into smaller pieces then put on a bus. When it got here, he re-assembled it back. He said it is very popular to have mocaks in Aceh and it is legal. The Palembang city regulations prohibit mocaks to be driven but I guess he is still driving it illegally around this area.

If you examine the mocak carefully, you can see that it can take on a total of 7 passengers - the bike rider and pillion rider on the bike section (2), plus 3 leaning back at the carriage section and 2 more facing opposite the 3 persons!

The Mi Aceh guy stir fries the noodles then use a lid to cover them up and steam it. It is a spicy dish. If you look properly at his stall, you can see a piece of beef hanging there. Other than the Mi Aceh, I also took away some BATAGOR which is something like dumplings and fried tofu (see photo below). I would not say that the Mi Aceh & Batagor were nice but at least I got to know more about the MOCAKs.