motorcycle licence

[francois]

Would anyone drive a motorcycle without insurance in their home country? Then why do it in Thailand where the risks are far greater? Assbandit it correct and the voice of reason.

[latintopxxx]

Lord God Almighty deliver me from mind killing totally boring posts

[goji]

Whilst your points raised Assbandit are 100% valid I'm guessing though that without a valid bike licence in the first place ( which was where this thread was kicking off from ) then no insurance, bought or otherwise, will in fact cover you

Exactly. And acquiring a valid license in (for example) the UK is quite difficult.

[assbandit]

Hi Nirish, I don't want to drag this out but may I respectfully say that to focus on the licence and not the insurance is very much the point (or should be)
you're absolutely right and without a valid licence you won't be covered anyway
but making sure you have a licence and still not bothering to take out insurance is a bit like venturing out into a storm and wearing a hat so as not to get your head wet. Without the proper clothes you'll die of pneumonia anyway!

[goji]

Inverting the discussion.

Is there anyone here who did not hold a motorcycle license at home, who then decided to get one purely for motorcycle hire when on holiday?

[christianpfc]

I once read somewhere [citation needed] that in Thailand, he who has the better is insurance is guilty in a traffic accident.

I once had a kind of traffic accident. I was walking in a place without sidewalk and a car touched me from behind (you could argue that I should have walked on the other side, so I can see cars approaching me). The side mirror broke (mot the glass; I mean the plastic case), and I later found light bruises on my hip. But right after the accident, after some "ooh" and "aah" from driver and bystanders, I found that I sustained no injuries and said "no problem" and left, before they could accuse me of jumping onto their mirror.

A lot of boys I know have old scars or fresh wounds on their legs, mostly from mocy accidents. I rarely ride as a mocy passenger in Thailand, but when I do, my legs are the outmost and my head is the upmost point (and will be the first to hit somewhere).

Get a bike. Go out into the country. See places where baht buses, or any buses, don’t go.
Visit rural Thailand, its only a few kilometres outside Pattaya.
Find places en route to eat, or drink, again where baht buses don’t go.
Visit some of the deserted beaches north of Pattaya, enjoy the solitude, compared to Dongtan!
There’s more to Pattaya than Sunee and Boyztown!

You can do all that with a car. I'm a cheapstake so I the idea of renting a motorbike (or first have some instruction to drive it as I never did, and get an appropriate driving license) appeals to me, however there several severe drawbacks:
safety as pointed out above (the above was just about scratches and bruises, but can be extended to severe accidents),
sun and heat (I would have to cover my skin completely to avoid sunburn),
navigation (I need my phone to navigate with google maps as I don't drive around aimlessly, but want to get to some place).

For those reasons, I happily rent a car with driver (most recent case 8 hours, 160 km, in Sakaw province for 1700 THB) to get me to where I want to go.

The only downside is parking. That can be an issue in town, but the places I want to go are out of town and I never had a problem with parking.

[Nirish guy]

Hi Nirish, I don't want to drag this out but may I respectfully say that to focus on the licence and not the insurance is very much the point!

Not sure you've understood the thread fully assbandit, I agree with you insurance if available is simply the way to go, BUT its not a case of if one should or shouldn't get a licence but more the fact that many (including myself until it was pointed out to me on here) believed our UK licences covered us when in fact they dont and to get a bike licence is now a separate long and expensive process - so to go buy insurance WITHOUT any licence is actually a total waste of time also. So the general discussion actually should be "are you all MAD renting and driving motorbikes in Thailand without either licence or insurance!?" - and the answer to that I think we all agree actually is "yes, most probably" - but then folk weight up the risk V reward as discussed earlier and make their own calls on that, none of which change the initial fact that we're all agreed that yes, it is probably very foolish - but I guess in life sometimes people do foolish things, and this it seems may be one of them.....

[assbandit]

Ok Nirish, I know this thread started out about licences but at least one person implied he was riding without insurance cos he hadn't thought of it and I thought it useful to let people know there's a very easy way to get daily motorbike insurance here

to latintopxxx: Lord God Almighty deliver me from idiots who aren't interested in threads but feel compelled to comment on them anyway. Thanks Lord.

[Nirish guy]

I thought it useful to let people know there's a very easy way to get daily motorbike insurance here.

You're absolutely right, it was I'm sure useful to many of us who weren't aware of that - myself included, so a useful post indeed.

[sglad]

Inverting the discussion.

Is there anyone here who did not hold a motorcycle license at home, who then decided to get one purely for motorcycle hire when on holiday?

Some of my uni mates during my year in Chiang Mai had never even ridden a motorbike at home yet chose to rent one in Thailand. I don't think they had motorbike licences. They kept telling me to dump my bicycle and get a "real" bike instead. I said no thanks and always wore a helmet when riding my bicycle. I didn't ride it at night though and relied on lifts from friends, grab/uber and sawng taews.