Carnival Cruise Lines waiter Made Giriyasa strides through downtown Miami on his three-hour shore leave checking off a mental shopping list: soap and deodorant from Walgreens, a CD player from Digital World and, most important, a traditional Indonesian meal at Matahari Café -- home cooking 11,000 miles from home.

Giriyasa is one of more than 3,000 cruise-line workers who stream into downtown on a typical summer Saturday, bringing alive streets that can seem deserted when office workers head home for the weekend.

It's a side of the center city unknown to many Miamians. Tucked among the discount clothing shops, electronics stores and Latin cafes are a handful of restaurants and other small businesses that cater to cruise crews.

''It's its own little world,'' says Robert Geitner of the Downtown Miami Partnership. ``Cruise workers are critically important to certain businesses.''

As city leaders like Geitner push to create a vibrant downtown where Miamians live and play as well as work, people like Giriyasa have already made it their stomping ground.

The cruise workers come from around the world, but mainly India, Indonesia and the Philippines. When their ships dock at the Port of Miami, they share cabs and shuttles to the vicinity of Flagler Street and Miami Avenue to shop, phone home, check e-mail at Web cafes and eat.

''Everything is here,'' says Giriyasa, who is sitting with a friend at Matahari, a month-old spot on Northeast First Avenue owned by an Indonesian ex-pat who once worked on a cruise ship himself.

Giriyasa and his buddy dig into a spicy mixture of steamed green beans, pork belly, roasted coconut, fried garlic and chiles sprinkled with lime juice. The smell alone takes him home to the Indonesian island of Bali, a place he hasn't been in months.

The cafe is a godsend for Giriyasa, 30, who works on the Liberty of the Seas. The cruise liner also makes stops in Jamaica; Cozumel, Mexico; Puerto Rico; and the Cayman Islands, but in those places he must settle for Chinese food.

PASSAGE TO INDIA

Two blocks east of Matahari, hidden inside a Flagler Street mall where vendors hawk Spanish-language CDs and fake leather handbags, Raj Agarwal pours steaming chai tea from behind a counter at Indian Prem while a flock of customers -- all young men from the ships -- browse his wares.

One wires money home at the counter, another pays for a Bollywood DVD, a third lines up to get a phone card -- $5 for a two-hour link home to India.

A man studies the small rack of dresses, picks one and gives it to Agarwal to mail to a girlfriend in New Jersey. This all-in-one South Asian stop even carries Indian shampoos and medicines in case Suave and Tylenol won't do.

Sandip Mondal, 34, a food manager for a Royal Caribbean ship, says downtown Miami has more to offer workers like him than other ports on the Caribbean circuit.

''I've been to Fort Lauderdale, but it's not as good,'' he says.

A dozen men sit on plastic lawn chairs in and out of the shop, taking turns dialing home to New Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai on Agarwal's cordless loaner phones. Saturdays are busiest for the Mumbai native, who settled in North Miami 11 years ago and opened Indian Prem (''love'' in Hindi) after a decade as a cruise-line housekeeper.

The workers begin arriving at about 10 a.m. and ''are always running,'' he says. The shop is almost empty by closing time at 4 p.m. Just an hour later, most ships have left port.

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