Buying and selling bike in SE Asia questions
 

Hi,

I am planning a trip to Thailand (Koh Samui) next June for a friends wedding, I figured while I am there, I may as well see the neighbouring countries (Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia), and spend 4-6 weeks of my annual leave prior to the wedding to scoot around the countries. Short time I know... but can't get more time off work.

I have done quite a bit of searching already, but still have some questions.
It looks like the best option is to buy a bike in Vietnam (Hanoi specifically), I would probably be interested in a GN125, or small Honda.
From what I have read is that while its technically illegal to buy a VN registered bike, everyone does it - just need to get all the papers (and possibly photoshop them into your name).
From there, it seems like border crossings are reasonably straight forward - particularly the smaller ones, possibly with the occasional couple of dollars going into the local constabulary pockets to smooth things over.

Is all the above mostly correct/current?
The main question I have, can I then sell the bike in Thailand and leave the country without difficulty?

Hi Flys Lo,
a couple of month ago we did a similar trip. We asked ourself the same question: Where to buy? We ended up buying bikes in Malaysia since its super easy and all legal.
We wrapped everything up in a blog post:
Buying A Motorcycle In South East Asia - Unleash Your Adventure

The following links might also be of interest for you:
Malaysia - Unleash Your Adventure
Thailand - Unleash Your Adventure
Laos - Unleash Your Adventure
Cambodia - Unleash Your Adventure

Have fun in SEAsia!!
Cheers Patrick

Thanks Patrick,

Appreciate your response, your blog is great, and very informative thank you. Perhaps I missed it, but I couldn't find out where you sold your bikes? Was it back in Malaysia?
If not, what was the process to sell a bike outside of the country you purchased it?

Thanks in advance,
Adrian

Hi Adrian,

we sold them in Malaysia again to a Honda dealer. That was super easy (it took about 2 hours including deregistration). We wrote a blog post about how we did it :)
Selling The Bikes In Malaysia - Unleash Your Adventure

If you sell it in another country I guess you have to do some "innovative" paper work.

Cheers Patrick