Motorcycles Suitable for Thailand Archives

Category Archives: Motorcycles Suitable for Thailand

This category is all about motorcycles and motors scooters that are suitable for driving in such Southeast Asian countries as Thailand. Due extremely high duties on imported bikes that can nearly double the prices charged in Europe and the U.S. comments about bikes that are prohibitively expensive here, lack parts availability and that are suited chiefly for high speed interstates in Western countries are of no interest here.

This video compares eight excellent motorbikes to determine which is the most versatile Thailand motorbike for Pattaya driving conditions.

Of these 8 bikes which is the most versatile Thailand motorbike — With its larger diameter 16 inch tires, the Nouvo Elegance can survive floods better than bikes with smaller tires

The bikes we chose from at Watchara Marine in the video were the Triumph Bonneville, the Yamaha Bolt, Yamaha R-3, Yamaha MT-3, Yamaha MT-7, the KTM Duke 200, Ktm 390, Yamaha N-Max 155, and Yamaha SR 400.

Only one will make the grade as the most versatile Thailand motorbike.

Nouvo Elegance carrying Laser printer — Besides dealing with the flood that nearly knocked my Elegance over, in the same week, I transported a universal power supply back to my condo, then the Laser printer in this picture. You can’t do this with a Honda PCX 150, the new Yamaha N-Max or any of the other motorcycles in this video due to the lack of bungee cord tie down hooks.
So in the real world of Pattaya where the motorcycle gets used a lot more than the car, are these bikes really better than the 135 c.c. Yamaha Elegance? Watch the video and decide for yourself

Well. that could be the point, the point being which bike is the most versatile Thailand motorbike. This video’s covering quite a few bikes that we can buy today in Thailand. But only a few of them are adept at squeezing through Pattaya’s traffic.

A Honda Forza won’t and neither will a Taiwanese Sym 400 because they are simply too large and bulky

for the city traffic on Pattaya’s crowded streets. And no, a Triumph or Yamaha MT-07 won’t slice and dice between cars as well as a Honda Wave. But it’s a lot easier than you’d think, which is why we are putting Triumph in this review. We’ve deliberately left out the biggest bikes at Watchara Marine because they are just too big and too powerful for Thailand’s road conditions.

I used to have a BMW R-65, a 650 c.c. horizontal twin with a modest 50 horsepower. A few years later I got my dream bike, a 1000 c.c. BMW K-100 RS. The bike had 90 horsepower and four cylinders. It was very fast. But it was 100 pounds heavier than the 650.

The K100 RS had much narrower handle bars which made it very suitable for driving down interstates at over 100 miles an hour. This made it much more cumbersome in city traffic whereas the 408 pound 650 handled like a dream. Bottom line? Driving a 1000 c.c. bike in Pattaya Thailand’s city traffic is just too painful to contemplate. But each to his own.