In today's video i'm going to tell you exactly what you need
to walk into a shop and purchase a motorbike here in thailand then i'm going to go into
a shop and actually purchase the motorbike and then at the end of this video i'll give
you all the little technical details about insurance taxes registration the green book
all that stuff how it was processed and i'll tell you what my bike costs so let's go
hey so what's going on youtube greetings from my beautiful beautiful apartment here in zhang tian
thailand in today's video i'm gonna go buy a motorbike should be pretty cool i've got
all the paperwork so just so you know if you want to buy a motorbike in thailand and get it
registered in your name you have to have two things you have to have a valid visa which
hopefully if you're in thailand you have a visa the second thing you need is a certificate
of residence so you get that from thai immigration there's a bunch of things you need to bring in
or you can just pay someone to do it so for me i'm all about outsourcing that kind of stuff
so i don't have to go sit in line in immigration so that's what i did i have the documents i need
now i'm going over to a place called mike's motorbikes they sell used bikes they have a really
good reputation they have really good ratings expats recommend them so that's where i'm headed
now so let's go over to mike's and i'll show you the bike that i'm gonna be getting so if you open
up google maps and type in mike motorbike pretty easy to find you'll see here it's in central patia
here's those reviews i was talking about there's a ton of them well this isn't a foolproof way to
know that it's a trustworthy place it's still to give you a little bit of peace of mind so i was
happy with all these reviews and so that's why i decided on this place to be completely honest
with you to have the most positive reviews hey we got mr mitch with us today what's going on mitch
he's also thinking about getting a motorbike so he figured he'd join us so
let's go in here and i'll show you the bike i'm actually interested in it's right here in the
front it's this yellow terox kind of reminds me of bumblebee from transformers this is a 2019
so it is two years old and it has 9 000 kilometers on it the kilometers are not um rental bike
kilometers that's a big deal for me i don't want rental bike kilometers so anyway i'm going to go
and talk to these people see about negotiating i might look at some of these other ones there's
some other pretty ones in here too so we'll see okay well i'm back there trying to negotiate a
deal on that yellow bike let's check out some of these other bikes i'll throw us prices out
so this is 53 900 baht the reason this one's more expensive is because it has keyless start
so you just have to have the key in your pocket i kind of like that but uh i really wanted a yellow
bike so you can see this one has a key the one i'm gonna buy also has a key but i'd love to
have that keyless start i'm constantly leaving my keys inside the bike so you can see two thousand
twenty seven thousand miles here's a two thousand twenty one for fifty two thousand baht with only
three thousand kilometers you know about fifty thousand bought here for one with 4 000 kilometers
here's a little bit cheaper option this is a honda click the same bike i've been running around
on and it's around 39 000 baht here's another honda click 28 900 baht let's see how many miles
it's got on it it's got ten thousand kilometers so i mean not a lot it's barely broken in
here's a 155 yamaha so if you want a traditional looking bike not a scooter
you can get this but you have to shift it uh you can see here 60 000 baht so very reasonable
and this this is kind of a little beauty here this is a honda adv 150 i think this comes in
a 300 as well these are more expensive because they're just a more professional stronger build
it's kind of a cross between a scooter and a normal motorcycle
but it is automatic and it's got the keyless start as well this is a great option all right
so i purchased the yellow arocs i'll talk more about the full cost license taxes insurance and
the cost of the bike a little bit later in the video but i also purchased a much needed
accessory so i travel with just one backpack and i'm gonna be doing a full motorbike tour
of thailand that i wanted to be able to carry everything i own on this bike so you have some
storage under the seat but i needed a little bit more storage and this carrying case will
hold my entire backpack so the carrying case the bracket and installation was about 150 additional
so here is my new travel buddy actually you know what let's go for a ride and find
a better location to give you the details all right so i figured i'd take you along
with me on the inaugural ride along the beach i'll tell you why i bought this bike and then
i'll stop and i'll show you the bike a little bit better than i did before
so oh also this is my first time ever doing like drive and talk so hopefully this is going to be a
learning experience hopefully i can keep the camera stable and you can actually hear me
so reason number one i bought a scooter instead of a traditional motorcycle is i wanted an
automatic it's really hard to find a traditional motorcycle that's automatic it's almost impossible
they almost all have gears to shift and since i'm doing this you know driving and talking and
filming type of thing i want something where you know i don't have to do too many things at once
the more things you have to do you know the more dangerous it can be and in thailand driving is
already a little bit dangerous so that is probably the biggest reason the second is for safety
and what i mean by safety is i don't plan on taking any highways i know a lot of people
will be like how can you take a 155 around the entire thailand you need a you know you need a
at least a 300 or a 500 or an 800 bmw you know that a touring bike well i plan on being on back
roads like this one right here i don't plan on ever really getting on any kind of highway
and the safety part of that is i'll always be going relatively slow i plan on traveling slow
and so if i do get in a motorbike wreck it'll be at a slow speed
and my chances of you know not hurting myself too bad are much higher than if i was on a faster bike
on the highway you know it's raining i slip you know the bike slips and you know i wreck
it you know 80 miles an hour or something so um those are the two huge reasons another reason
is costs like you can get these motorbikes for pretty cheap i've actually got one of
the more expensive ones actually probably medium priced ones but let me stop here this looks like
a good spot right look how pretty that is i wish it wasn't cloudy and you could see
you can see how beautiful it is this is the road that runs along where my condo is
it's pretty awesome i'm gonna stop here and i'll get out and show you the bike it's kind
of wet here it rained earlier that's okay all right let me park this thing
so yeah this is still a work in progress for me this whole like attached the camera
to my body i don't even know was i over the mic there hopefully the audio of this comes out i've
actually got this at wide angle just to make sure that i catch everything because i've never done
this before so comment down below was that good writing footage uh how was the audio let me know
so all right so this is a popular bike here in asia the philippines and thailand especially
uh it's called the arrow x or x uh in thailand they call it the arocs for me it's arrow x that
makes more sense to me than air ox but you know i call it airox in thailand so they know what i'm
talking about it has a 155 liquid cool engine it's the yamaha engine it's pretty indestructible as
you saw at the motorbike place i had this little back storage area put on i think it's locked i
don't know there and that is big enough to put in my backpack so i can carry everything i own
with me uh there's my helmet i plan on getting a better helmet than that to be honest with you but
uh that's what i'm using now it i mean it'll kind of protect my chrome dome and one other thing i
added was this cell phone holder i had another cell phone holder on my other bike but it was
really really flimsy and this one is really robust um it was a little um it was a little pricey for
thailand it was like 60 bucks installed i know that doesn't sound like much to someone from the
us but that's that's a pricey item in thailand 60 and it has a usb port here too so i can
keep my phone charged so the installation you know the electrical stuff and the cost of the
phone carrier was about 60 us dollars so but i wanted a a really good one
so what did this bike cost so all together the sticker price uh one year registration
one year insurance and the taxes on the purchase all together was 48 300 baht which right now is a
little bit over 1400 so this is about a medium priced bike i think you saw the honda adv in
there the used one was about 80 000 baht so you know more like two thousand dollars and
you also saw the honda clicks in there which were which you can get anywhere from uh 20 000 baht to
you know 35 000 baht so that's about six hundred dollars to you know eight nine hundred dollars so
these are really affordable obviously they get great gas mileage so that was a big
factor for me too so why did i get the yellow there are a bunch of different other colors
and it wasn't because it was the cheapest although it was the cheapest it was the
cheapest because it's a 2019 but it only has 9 000 miles on it so it's not even broken in yet
the other i think the 2020 green one that i considered had 8 000 miles on it um
so the only thing i wish this thing had is the auto start because i leave my keys in there
all the time all the time and luckily people don't steal things here in thailand or i would
have already had a bike stolen but if you leave the keys in and it's on you will burn out the
battery pretty quickly they don't have the biggest batteries on them so um but the reason i chose the
yellow is this bike is going to become a character on this youtube channel with me on my journey
around thailand uh in the next you know month and a half i'm gonna do some trial trips with
this but once my lease expires in my apartment i'm hitting the road i'm traveling all over thailand
and uh hopefully into other countries too like cambodia and laos maybe even vietnam but
the color yellow i mentioned it kind of reminds me of a character or it's going to be a character
so it reminds me of my favorite childhood cartoon character which was bumblebee from
the transformers you know i was a little kid when transformers came out you know i was like seven
or eight years old watching it and my favorite character of course uh was bumblebee i liked the
vw bugs and that's what he was back then i know in the new movies he's like a mustang or a charger or
something but i remember him as you know bumblebee the bug and this just reminded me of bumblebee so
in the future i'm gonna try to get an autobots logo for right here you know bumble bee this
thing out maybe we'll get some some more graphics some bumble bee type graphics uh along the uh you
know on the bike maybe we'll make this more like a stinger get some graphics you can get like graphic
stuff done here in thailand really cheap so maybe we'll try to make this like some sort of stinger
we'll get this to match a little bit we'll put some yellow on this but yeah so that is the latest
addition to you know to the team oh one last thing i want to do i want to do a little recap
of the buying process so you need two things to walk into a place and buy so you need your um
a current visa so that's just your little stamp in there that says you're good for 30 days 60
days 90 days one year whatever it is so you need your current um thailand visa and you need your
residence certificate and i in the beginning i put a whole list of things i'll throw it up here again
but you need to go to immigration to get that but once you have that stuff you walk in you
can buy with those two things and then if you buy at a dealership they'll handle the taxes license
and insurance for you and that came in right away i've already got my registration and my
insurance card you get this thing called a green book when you buy which basically is transfer
of ownership so this was owned by one other person so their name will be in the green book
and then my name will be in the green book once they transfer ownership officially over to me and
that takes about a month that's another reason i had to rent a place long term here because i
knew i was going to have to wait around for the green book mike from mike's motorbike is the one
who handles all that he'll call me when the green book's ready like he called me when the
registration and the insurance card was ready so so you can i mean it's all all in one process
if you buy from a dealer whether it's used or new if you buy from an individual then you have to go
to the thai you know dmv and get all the paperwork done for your vehicle you got to go out and get
insurance you got to you know get it registered at the dmv you've got to get your green book uh
all that stuff taken care of so there's a bunch more steps if you buy from a private
seller nothing wrong with that but if you go to a dealer it's actually much easier so
anyway that's bumblebee tell me what you think i kind of took a cue from
paddy doyle if you haven't watched him his motorbike is called dreamy it's a it's an older
bike much more nostalgic much more of a character than this one but uh i kind of took a cue from him
and i was like you know what i'm gonna name it and hopefully the motorbike becomes a character
uh in my story and my on my youtube channel anyway if you enjoyed this video make sure you
hit that thumbs up button if you want to see more travel adventures pretty soon on this motorbike
make sure you hit that subscribe button thanks for watching see you next video
with my friends for another year