Category Archives: Driving

Driving

Getting My Thai Driver’s License

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Decided I better write another entry on this blog or people will begin to wonder if I am still here. Somehow, the days and weeks are flying by. It’s hard to believe that we have already been here for almost four months.

After many weeks of interruptions, and extended periods of time without my passport in hand, I finally was able to go in and get my Thai driving license last week.  It was a bit of a production and took a whole day to complete.  I had to do it since I did not own a valid driving permit for any country.  My Canadian one expired a few years ago and my counterfeit Chinese one was also past its date. I probably could have survived without one here but it is kind of nice to have the piece of paper in your wallet in case you ever want to rent a car.  As in China, the police here in Chiangmai rarely check such things.

I was told it would take a whole day and a whole day it took.  I arrived at the Chiangmai Transport Office about 8:30 in the morning. You need to bring your visa, a residence permit, and a hospital medical certificate. I was attempting to obtain both a motorcycle license and a car license so I had to do some things twice. Luckily, they did have English forms to fill in so I didn’t need a translator on that score. After my paper work was handed in, I was shuffled along with about 150 other participants to begin the process.  Yes, they do 150 at a time!  That in itself was amazing to me. Read More

Driving

Honda PCX150 – New wheels!

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It has been the proverbial question for the last couple of weeks; do we get a motorcycle or a scooter?  After much deep thought and consideration, we went with a brand new Honda PCX 150.  For the same price range, the other alternative would have been to purchase a used motorcycle, somewhere in the 200cc – 250cc range.  As I wrote in an earlier post, 99% of the population that rides on two wheels has a scooter. And unless you plan on doing a lot of cross-Thailand touring, there is not much point in getting anything bigger. After reading about the constant carnage on the Thai highways (worse accident record than China), my dreams of touring Thailand on a motorcycle soon evaporated.  We will stick with safer ways to get around the country! This cool little machine will fit our needs just fine.

It is definitely a high-tech machine. With fuel injection and a 2-valve, liquid cooled engine, it has a surprising amount of efficiency, torque and power for being so small!  It actually has more horsepower and torque than the new 200cc motorcycle I was looking at last week. The starter motor and cooling system are both integrated into the engine which saves on weight and space. I don’t know if I would want to take it on any major highway but it is great for getting around town and for short trips into the countryside.

PCX150We wanted something reliable and this fits the bill.  It came with a three year warranty on the engine and a five year warranty on the fuel injection system. With all the necessary insurance, licensing and one-year of theft insurance, the grand total came to around $2500. It has enough bells and whistles to excite any gadget freak!  Built in alarm system, automatic locking with the key chain button, locked gas tank and starter, and a digital dashboard that would put many cars to shame! Tack on the 100 miles per gallon that it regularly gets, and we decided it was a winner!

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Driving

Asia’s Honda Wave

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Is that a motorcycle, a scooter or a motoscoot?

So what’s with all these little Honda Waves and their copycat cousins that I see everywhere I go throughout Asia? They are more than a scooter but less than a motorcycle.  Even I get get confused so I have interchanged the two terms throughout this article. Whatever you decide to call them, they have taken over Asia. In North America, the big biker crowd would laugh them off the street. In the US and Canada, a 1000cc motorcycle is now considered a mid-sized machine. Here the two-wheel culture is a 180-degree turn from any paradigm I knew before I moved here. You would be hard-pressed to see a bike over 500cc during your daily walkabouts on the backstreets of Chiangmai. Travel to any country in Asia, and the Honda Wave,the Honda Dream and all their knock-offs, dominate the streets. Whether you are in Thailand, Bali, or China, these things are everywhere. You’ll find them parked at the mall by the hundreds, lined up at every intersection at the front of all the other traffic, and taking over any space through which you want to walk. Read More

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