Hello all,

I am about to head to South-east Asia for a few months. During part of my time there I have the plan to buy a small bike (step-thru sort of thing) in Sumatra and then riding it to Bali.

Anyone have any info that may be of use?

Cost of small bikes, ease of purchase, insurance, registration etc

Thanks.

Hi Major,
Greeting from Indonesia. I live in Jakarta.
Have you bought your bike in Sumatra? We have several kind of bikes here, most of them are small thumper with sufficient power. We have Honda Tiger (IDR 23million-USD$ 2.700), or Yamaha Scorpio (IDR 22million-USD$ 2400), or Kawasaki KLX 250 (IDR 58 million-USD$6.300). There are lot of ways to purchase, you can buy on dealer by multiple installment or cash and carry. They usually offer you some insurance and also taking care of bike's registration. Hope it may help. What town in Sumatra do you live now?

get it under the table, sell it the same way.

Officially it seems it's close to impossible. A friend I met in Malaysia and again in Souther Sumatra had a good mate of his visit and bought a bike for him. Simply rock up in Medan, go to one of the cheaper hotels, if you're not already there, and say you want to buy a bike and than relax. TravFella has a real nice owner and also did the tricke for them.

They bought the bike there within 1 day, a used 180cc Hondacopy, dual-cylinder for 11.000.000. They sold it in Maninjau close to that again. Would have even got more, but apparently it's an issue to get the plates changed from Medan to Maninjau.

As his was a big-ish bike you'll get the scooters for less.

What I forgot

You could also try to get an Indonesian person to buy a bike for you from a dealer as they have loads of almost new bikes around as many Indonesians buy bikes on credit and after 3 moths can't afford it anymore. You can get them at great discounts cause the number of people doing this is insane, also cause the system is really dumb, and nobody wants to buy a used bike on credit or buy used bikes from dealers as they get them cheaper but crappier on the streets.

I personally really liked the Yamaha fuel injection ones. Vi-Xion made a good impression and you can get a round headlight for it^^. But it's a bike, not stepthrough.

Also I guess this might be too late for you as I just saw it's ages ago you posted this.

Hope you had a good ride anyways.

Yamaha Vixion/Scorpio and Honda tiger are all good quality japanese bikes but keep in mind that for taller non-indonesians you will need to make some adjustments to bar and seat to ride comfortably.

You can service these bikes all over indonesia at original honda/yam outlets and wont cost you much, recommended over any roadside bengkel.

Im at Lombok, let me know if you need a bike.

__________________
Amsterdam-Australia 2007-201x Amsterdam-Capetown 2002-2003

Hi - I am hoping to buy a 125-200cc motorbike in Indo and then ship it to my address in the USA. Am in Singapore now, have been asking bike guys here if this is possible, no one seems to know. Any suggestions?

The big question is WHY?

If your intention is only to temporarily import the bike to the USA for the purposes of short-term tourism, I think it would be much, much less expensive for you to purchase a new 125-200cc motorbike in the USA, plate it there, then sell it when you leave. The cost of shipping a small motorcycle back and forth from Asia to the USA and back to Asia again will be far, far higher than the depreciation on a US purchase.

If you are thinking of buying a bike in Asia and permanently importing it to the USA (meaning, plating it there), forget about it. The bike you buy in Asia will not have met the safety standards mandated by the US FMVSS, even if it is identical in every respect to the same model that is sold in the USA. The problem is that it won't have a US Federal approval sticker on it for 1) Emissions Control, and 2) Safety standard compliance. That means you won't be able to plate it in the USA.

Trust me on this one, I have been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. I now own two identical Honda PanEuropean motorcycles - one in Europe with a European safety sticker on it (put there by Honda when it left their factory in Japan) and another one in Canada with a North American safety sticker on it (again, put there by Honda when it left their factory). Other than minor differences in the headlight and turn signals (differences that you really have to know where to look in order to find them), the two motorcycles are identical. But, neither one could ever be plated in the opposite jurisdiction, because they don't have the safety and emissions compliance stickers on them required by the opposite jurisdiction.

Michael