australian bike into southeast asia - easiest country?

[hazzaktm640]

Hello all,

looking into flying an Australian bike (ktm 640) into SE Asia (Cambodia, Thailand, Laos or Vietnam) and spending a few months trekking abuot - wondering if anyone could advise the most convenient country to get the bike into from Australia through customs etc, also different costs. if anyone has done this recently any other advice would be much appreciated.


Many thanks in advance.

 

[The Bigfella]

I rode up, through the islands... as have several others I know. A couple of friends have flown in via KL.... using, ahem, Malaysian Airlines. IIRC they were quite cheap.... and that's probably still the case. You need a carnet for Malaysia though... so it may be cheaper overall to just fly it in to Bangkok... on a temporary import permit. There's plenty of info on various entry requirements on the forum here.... check out the country info threads.

Enjoy.

 

[hazzaktm640]

thanks for the reply bigfella,
thinking Bangkok may be easier than KL. when you say you rode up through the islands.... can you expand on that a little? how and where do you get the bike out of oz initially? i didn't know that was possible. my apologies for my ignorance.

 

[The Bigfella]

I left Sydney at the end of July '11.... rode up to the tip of Cape York, through Queensland and the Northern Territory, shipped the bike to Dili in Timor-Leste with Perkins Shipping (now simply part of Toll, I believe), rode around Timor-Leste until that visa ran out (highly recommended... most people miss it), did a southern border crossing into Indonesia. Had intended to just blast through Indonesia, but loved it... spent 3 1/2 months there all up. West Timor, Rote (sans bike), Flores (a highlight... brilliant place), Komodo and Rinke (again, sans bike), Sumbawa, Lombok, Gili Trawangan (sans bike), Bali (left the bike there for 4 months with a Balinese friend whilst I visited home), Java, Sumatra... each of these crossings was on local ferries - longest being West Timor to Flores (15 hours - overnight... rented one of the officer's cabins).

From Sumatra (left the bike there for a month too, to come home for some work), I shipped it via the onion boat from near Medan to Penang (Cakra Enterprises in Penang). Rode around Malaysia for a while (came home for a week for work)... then into southern Thailand, up the peninsular, western Thailand... spent some time in a refugee camp, across to Chiang Mai... fell in love with there. Ended up doing several excursions into and through Laos, Cambodia, etc. Didn't get past the China border. Ended up buying some bikes in Asia and shipped the Super Enduro home from Chiang Mai.

I've got some partial ride reports on this forum and a continuous one on ADV

Here's some of mine on here

Laos in September

Scootering it in Vietnam - a prior trip, done in 2010

Testing the depth in Cambodia

There's another one or two that I need to finish off at some stage. I'm currently back in Sydney... working on some bearing replacements for a bike that's in Laos