My original travel plans for a trip from Belgium to Australia took me halfway through Indonesia, with ideas of shipping the bike from Bali across to Darwin. Now I'm in Sumatra and current research shows this might not be possible. Is there anyone out there with further info' for shipping options in this region, as everything points back to Singapore at present ...

The usual Indo' Oz route goes thro E.Timor, but there isn't enough time for me to get right across to Dilli due to work commitments as well as the time remaining on my visa, so this is not really an option.

Any further info' on this, or contacts for shipping agents in either Bali or Jakarta, would be really appreciated.

Bart

Hi, we ended up shipping our Vstrom by airfreight from Bali to Perth in Feb-08. Were planning to go Dili, but there was the attack on president&prime minister, so didn´t feel like the right time to visit. Were also getting short on visa time, I heard it could be extended somehow ´unofficially´ without having to leave the country, but not very cheap, and did not test whether it would work.

Our agent in Bali was CAS Cargo Bali, I think you´ll find them on the web. They usually handle sending stuff like furniture overseas, so we were at times uncertain, whether or not they´d be able to handle this at all, and they did screw up with the Dangerous Goods declaration, and we had to
run around town to get it corrected, etc. But in the end, they got our bike flown by Quantas via Melbourne to Perth (had to be routed that way, as the direct plane to Perth was too small to carry this, Garuda was another option, but they said 50 kilos is maximum they´ll take).

This was NOT cheap, in fact it was very expensive at around 1200 euros total, but it´s possible, if your in a hurry.


There was a couple Aussies staying in Bali at the same time, also riding bikes, and they send them by sea to Perth, said it was around 1/3rd of our price, possibly even less as they were able to put 2 bikes as a single shipment. But the bikes were to be taken by truck to Surabaya first (that´s in eastern Java) then shipped from there, and it was expected to take 4-5 weeks to arrive. I dont know, how it went with them in the end.