South East Asia on Motorbikes

5 Countries, 5 Months, 15.000km - a ride report

















by Theresa and Max



Hello Motorbiking community, we are Max and Theresa, a young german couple (23 & 20). We have spent the past six months travelling Southeast Asia on motorbikes. It has been the trip of a lifetime, so many incredible things we´ve seen and done.
Finding the perfect little tropical island in Malaysia, riding the Mae Hong Son loop in Thailand, fighting the rainseasonstorms and discovering ancient tombs in Laos, getting chased by cops in Cambodia, climbing an active vulcano and finding the perfect wave in Indonesia...
And it wouldn´t have been possible without the help of the online motorbiking community. Therefore, we want to give something back, and write this ride report.

It would be way to much to put it in one post, so we´re going to make 5 posts out of it:

1. Introduction / Preparation
2. Malaysia
3. Thailand
4. Laos
5. Cambodia
6. Bali, Lombok
7. Sumbawa, Flores, Rinja



Introduction / Preparation

I (Max) have been on a round the world trip in 2008/2009, and ever since dreamt of going on the road again. The last trip ended in Bali, where I back then tought myself how to ride a motorbike. I loved the landscape, the culture, the climate, the incredible nice people... and I knew I wanted to come back. Another country I was fascinated about is Nepal, and ever since I started studying in 2009, I had the idea of riding on a motorbike from Bali to Nepal. Research on the forums showed this to be impossible, and soon a new plan developed: To ride from Malaysia to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, and then explore the islands of Indonesia, all on a motorbike.

Intitally I wanted to do this on my own, but when my girlfriend Theresa decided to quit her education as a cook in Januar 2012 and planned to begin studying in fall 2012, the opportunity to do this together posed itself. When I asked her, she wanted some time to think about it - and then said yes, two months before the date I intended to leave.

There were so many things left to do, we had to find out where to buy the bikes, which border we could cross with the bikes and which not, what documents we needed (lots), what vaccinations were required (none), and which insurance company would rip us the least of.
Theresa had never been riding a motorbike before and started her driving lessons right away, she got her official driving license five days prior to our departure day.


Bikes

One of the biggest questions was where to get a bike from.
We never really looked into shipping a bike from Germany, just shipping it one way would have required a big part of our budget. Therefore, the big question for us was to rent or buy - and where exactly to do it.

Renting would have had the big advantage of getting the bike right away, and not worrying about how and where to sell the bike in the end. Unfortunately, it turned out to be impossible to take a rented bike across international borders. As we didn´t want to get a new bike in each country we were going to visit, the only option left was to go and buy a motorbike.

Fortunately, we found a german couple who had done a similar trip on scooters just one year before, they had written an excellent post about where to buy bikes from on their website. (Smashwords — Buying and Riding a Motorcycle in South East Asia — A book by Sherrie McCarthy)

They recommended Malaysia, and so we went ahead and booked flight tickets to Kuala Lumpur. (They switched their blog post into an buyable e-paper, so I won´t go into detail and spoil the information)

Still, the question remained where exactly to buy the bike, and first of all, what specific bike to get.
I was hoping we could buy a honda tiger, the exact same bike I had had three years ago when I visited Bali.
Unfortuately, it turned out to be only sold in indonesia.

Malaysia is a pretty developed country, and we soon realized we had a wide range of bikes to choose from.
Our total bike budget was about 5000€. We never considered riding 2-up, which left us with two options - to buy used bikes in the 250-500cc range, or to buy new bikes in the 150-250cc range.

Coming from germany, a country where motorbikes usually are 500 - 1xxx cc, it was natural to look into the bigger, used bikes. They would provide more power, their bigger tires would be good on dirt roads in laos, and of course a bigger bike also meant more safety - in most parts of SEA small yields to big. But it also meant added fuel and maintenance costs, and buying a used bike of course also increased the likelikhood of breaking down somewhere, With no spare parts available for the big bike. Most of all, it also meant sticking out of the other motorbikers: In most parts of South East Asia, a big bike is considered a toy for the riches, whereas a smaller bike blends in among the local bikers anywhere and usually makes for a warm welcome.
We also assumed a smaller bike would get us less attention from corrupt cops in Cambodia, an assumption that proved to be completely wrong.

We ended up looking at three bikes: a Honda CBR 150 with 24hp, a Yamaha FZ 150i with 18hp, and a Kawasaki KLX with 11 hp.
The horsepower sounds incredible low for European standards, but the thing to always keep in mind is that traffic in Southeast asia differs fundamentally from Europe; most "motorbikes" are tiny scooters that do 40-80 km/h, most cars are rusty and old, and don´t even get me started on the big old trucks that crawl up the mountain roads, loaded five meters high, going 10km/h - and proudly sporting a "100 Horse Powers" plate in the front.
The average speed on a main road is about 70km/h, on vulcaneous Indonesia it sometimes went below 40km/h.
The Honda was too munch of a sportbike in regard of frame and suspension, and the Kawasaki lacked the speed we were going to need driving long distances, so we ended up settling for the FZ: It had, compared to the other bikes, the biggest frame, a really good suspension, and the 18hp ment it could go 130km/h, which (apart from malaysia) meant we usually were the fastest on the road.

Our beloved bikes, can you guess why we blinded the headlights?

As Malaysia is part of the ASEAN, buying the bike there enabled us to take it across most international boarders without a carnet de passage, only Indonesia was off limits, but more of this later.



Safety

Being german, we also were pretty concerned about safety, especially after I had read up that the chance to die on a motorbike in Malaysia or Thailand is almost nine times as high as back home in Germany.
We were looking into proper motorbiking gear, but a leather vest would just have been to hot in the sometimes 40+ degrees of SE Asia. Patrick and Sherry did it in a full leather suit, to this day I can´t believe how they didn´t die from heatstroke So I (Max) settled for a Alpinestars motocross vest, some summer gloves and an Uvex motocross helmet we got for a bargain price. Theresa got the same helmet and gloves, but instead chose a proper (summer)biking jacket. Initially we had no leg protection, we were riding the first 2000km in shorts and hiking boots. The boots stayed, we got some additional leg protection at the end of the Malaysia trip though.


Somewhere deep in Laos

On top of that, We got eight vaccinations to cover for almost any disease that could strike us.

Thanks
To end this section, we would like to say thanks to all the people that made this possible, especially:

Antusiang, Zul, and the MBC crew ( Malaysian Bikers Community 2012 - Index ): for helping us at the start and end of our mainlandtrip, and for the incredible warm welcome.
The guys at HUBB and Ride Asia( http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/ ) ( Ride Asia Motorcycle Forum ): HUBB for initial research and motivation, Ride Asia for all the information regarding border crossings in SE Asia.
Patrick and Sherry: They did a similar trip a few months before us on scooters, although we never met them, their "where to buy a motorbike in SE Asia" post was extremely helpful

Special thanks to:
Mohdi Ibrahim: for all the information and help - and for being a great friend.