Exchange Programme

The next day, we drove to lunch on the outskirts of Bandung, driving through kampungs and villages along the way, admiring the vast countryside with padi fields filling the horizon whilst enjoying the 335i’s superb dynamics on the twistier parts of the route.

After lunch, while some Singaporean journo decided that he wanted to shop for clothes at Bandung’s factory outlets, I decided to head straight back to Jakarta immediately in one of the 335is. I’ve always known Bandung as a much less crowded city than Jakarta from my visits when I was young so I reckoned Bandung’s roads to be less jam packed than Jakarta’s. How wrong I was – exiting the city and heading back towards the Cikampek toll road took over an hour with traffic barely moving in some instances on the busy Friday afternoon.

Onto the toll road back to Jakarta but the 335i can barely stretch its legs today due to the heavy traffic on the highway. We learned to appreciate the 335i’s superb ride quality when going over bumpy stretches of the highway whilst following behind slower traffic at medium speeds. The suspension displays a high degree of control and ride pliancy at higher speeds as well, thus giving us the confidence to push the 335i despite the less than perfect quality of the Indonesian tarmac whenever the traffic relented. Bent on having some local street side fare, we stopped at one of the many motorway services area in search of local food. You can find almost any form of affordable Indonesian street food at the larger motorway services area – soto Madura, sop buntut, bakso sapi, nasi padang, gado gado, sate, bakmee – you name it!

As we neared Jakarta, the traffic slowed to a crawl once again, prompting local drivers to take to the shoulder whenever possible. The horrible jam made the latter parts of the journey a rather painful one. As we neared our destination of the Grand Hyatt hotel right in front of the Welcome monument which we drove past before leaving for Bandung yesterday, we reminisce on our journey in the BMW 335i, which has made for a great ride thanks to its superb performance, confidence inspiring handling and excellent ride quality among other attributes. Only the jams made the drive a slightly frustrating one.

Credits: Story by Raymond Lai Setiawan Photos by BMW Indonesia