South East Asia And Then Some
Evening folks,
Myself and my girlfriend and planning a year out next year from work...never did the uni gap year so we figured now's a good time with the economy in the state that it's in and having saved a couple of pennies.
Last couple of years I've developed a dislike/fear of flying and that's opened up overland travel for me.
We're planning to travel from Moscow on the Trans Mongolian/Manchurian to Beijing, spending some time there learning Mandarin and exploring. Then we're heading to Shanghai for a bit more of the same. After that we will keep traveling overland to HK (where my girlfriend is originally from and has a house there) where we'll spend a month or so seeing relatives and relaxing before heading to Vietnam.
When we get to Hanoi we plan on buying a motorbike and exploring the north before taking the bike down to HCMC then into Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia where we will stay for a while.
From there we were going to try and get overland to India but I'm not sure if that's even possible (or probably very £££).
We'll spend some time in India, traveling all over before flying home - I'd like to carry on and see Turkey but I doubt that our money would last that long!
Our other option is doing this trip in reverse. I'd like to know if anyone has an opinion on either direction, the route or some good old advice.
We both like to get off the beaten path and have a big interest in food. Neither of us is against stopping off to work along the way, and if we can organise something, we'd like to help out with some sort of charity/conservation group.
A couple of questions...
1. I've read a few posts on here and other sites about crossing VN, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia with a bike and there seems to be conflicting information on border crossing.
Can you take a bike, bought in VN, across these countries?
2. What documentation will I require?
3. In China, I've read that you simply can't buy/rent a bike and drive through the country. Is this true? and do you need a government guide if you are going out of the cities?
4. Does my girlfriend, who has a HK card and passport, get any benefits i.e. allow us not to require a guide?
5. Is it possible to travel from Thailand to India? I expect that it's Burma that's the problem. Does anyone know if it's possible to travel through there? Failing that I'd be keen to get on a ferry/cargo ship of some sort.
6. I'm sure there's been plenty people who have done this sort of trip, could anyone give me a rough indication on how much to budget?
7. Depending on which way round we're going to travel, can anyone tell me what might be a good time, weather-wise, to start in each country. We're not bothered about being in the rainy season but I'm concerned about biking through VN etc as that's going to affect our travel.
Also, if anyone is doing all or part of these places next year it would be good to share tips/research and maybe hook up along the way.
Thanks for reading, happy biking!
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