I notice a lot of traffic lately here on the
bulletin board concerning transporting of machines in/out of southeast Asia.

I have only shipped to this area once, this past June. We air shipped the bike into Penang, Malaysia from the U.S. Unfortunately the plan to ship the bike out of Penang was spoiled and we were forced to ship out of Bangkok.

Shipping into Penang and retrieving the bike out of customs was a breeze. We arrived at Penang airport in the afternoon and had the bike out of customs and at my mate's parent flat w/in four hours. Penang airport is very small and comfortable to deal with. The freight handlers are located approxiamtely 100 meters from the customs warehouse. Customs did not ask for a carnet, yet I volunteered to have the document filled out and stamped by them. You must have the crate or pallet moved by a freight handler and taken to the customs house parking lot for inspection. This will cost you approximately
$10-20us depending on how you bargain. The cost is for the freight handlers usage of their truck and towlift. The customs warehouse will charge you a tax fee for storage, which is approximately $20us.
Penang has decent air service with major air freight carriers because of the local monster manufacturing facilities like Intel, etc...


Now, as far as the Bangkok airport is concerned, it is massive and chaotic. a humongous amount of freight is processed at this airport daily. Why would you want to deal with this mess? Your crate/pallet can sit around a long time in this very busy airport before it goes anywhere. Selling a decent stolen DP machine in Bangkok is no hard task, so think about what may happen
when it sits around for awhile. Overlanders are generally frugal people and thinking that your one bike's worth of shipping costs is that important to the shippers in Bangkok is only dreaming.

I did not use Singapore for any shipping, yet the logistics of their shipping capability seems like a world of a difference than Bangkok.

E-mail me direct if you want more details.

Good Luck.

cheers,
Carl