Joy from BMW
BMW Lifestyle – How you can get JOY from your BMW on a Hazy Weekend – Part 1
13 August 2005 – Tanjung Jara – It is now 6.15 pm, and at this moment, I am waiting to go down to the poolside for a BBQ dinner at Tanjong Jara Resort, somewhere in Dungun, Terengganu. This morning, at 7.00 am, I was at the BMW headquarters at Cyberjaya, Selangor.
This is just one of the things you could do on a hazy weekend, if you owned a BMW. It doesn’t matter which model, because we had the 1, 3, 5, and 7 Series, 10 cars in all, courtesy of BMW Malaysia. You could do like we did, for instance, start from Cyberjaya with a bunch of your friends, and take a leisurely drive along the highway north to Simpang Pulai, and take the new highway to Cameron Highlands, and arrive in time to have lunch in the quaint and very English Smokehouse Inn. We pushed off from Cyberjaya at around 8.30 am, and were at the Smokehouse Inn by 12.30 pm.
There, it was a simple English lunch of either salmon, or leg of lamb, topped off with a very nice helping of trifles and coffee or tea. It is really refreshing to breathe in the mountain air; you don’t smell the smoke from the haze, and the air is sweet and clean.
After Camerons, you could also do as we did, which was to take the new highway from Camerons down to Gua Musang, a little sleepy hollow that basically began its existence many years ago as a service centre for the once flourishing timber industry. The drive down the mountain is interesting, and the roads start with tight corners from the top, and as we flattened out towards the lowlands, became a smooth flowing highway with fast sweeping bends, very good for high speed driving. Here, you can unleash the full power of your BMWs, and get the traction control to work. We made it to Gua Musang in less than one hour, although the distance was around 120 kilometres.
The next part is a little tricky if you are alone; not for BMW, because when we reached the end of the ‘tulips’, which was the main padang in Gua Musang, we had a surprise.
Wolfgang Schlimme, the Managing Director of BMW Malaysia, in cahoots with Vijay, the PR chief, had arranged, of all things, a Sikorsky helicopter to airlift us all the way to Tanjung Jara. (I suppose that if you are doing this on your own, you might have to drive up to Tanah Merah, and come back down the coast to Tanjung Jara.) So it was bye bye to the BMWs that had served us so well, and on to the 18 seater chopper. The flight lasted an hour, and the landing area was another little padang near Dungun. The whole village came out to witness the spectacle of our group of motoring media spilling out of this great big bird that descended from the sky, a sight they do not see every day.
Then it was a five minute coach ride to Tanjung Jara for a welcome drink, strawberries and champagne for refreshments. And all this is just day 1. Tomorrow is another day of activities, the nature of which I do not have a clue to, but I guess it will be just as exciting. I thing they are going to let us drive the SUVs (hopefully on dirt), and the very, very fast Z4.
Keep your eyes on this site for the next episode.
