Making friends with foodpanda...

Ok so living in Jakarta, there's one thing everyone here always talks about...the traffic or macet in Bahasa Indonesia. Your life is ruled here by the time it takes to get between two points. That time can change at will and is constantly at the mercy of how many cars, motorbikes, trucks, buses, bicycles, bajaj or carts there might be on the road. Some days you just don't want to face it all...most days really but I don't work from home so that's unavoidable. However, on a day when I don't have to go out and face the mayhem it's nice to know there are some options for making the important things in life like your lunch, come to you. I'm not talking about the usual fast food options of MacDonalds and Burger King, I'm talking about decent, delicious food choices. Enter my new best friend, foodpanda. Foodpanda is a food delivery service here in Indonesia that enables the lazy, don't want to face the traffic bums like me, to have a plethora of restaurants at their fingertips. It's easy, go to the foodpanda website, select the area you are living in (important for ensuring lunch doesn't become dinner!) and all the restaurants connected with the service pop up. The difficult part is deciding what cuisine you want. There's Thai, Mexican, Italian, Japanese and Indonesian. Decide what you want by clicking and adding to the cart, then register yourself and checkout. Huh? That's it? Yes it is. Shortly after (I think it was 3 minutes) I received an sms informing me my food would be delivered within the hour. Sit back, relax and wait for your delicious meal to arrive at your door. It actually took less than an hour to reach me and was all nicely packaged up. I ordered from King of Thai and my green curry was piping hot and deliciously spicy. The mango salad was crisp and fresh and the pad thai extremely satisfying. Prices vary of course, depending on what you order and most restaurants have a delivery fee but it's minimal at around Rp. 15,000. However, not having to face insane traffic, smog, pollution and whistleblowing parking attendants...PRICELESS! 

So if you feel like staying glued to the sofa, just let your fingers do some tapping and have foodpanda do the hard work for you. They offer their services in a number of countries including Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. Too convenient not to be tried!

Foodpanda

www.foodpanda.co.id/