On Monday, I finally got the green light to take my bike over to Trans Air Cargo's office in Bangkok but as if written in a script, I got pulled by yet more cops literally 100m from the cargo office! Using my awful Bangkok street map (with most of the street names written in Thai script) i found the street where the office was located, which was on the other side of the busy Rama road I was traveling on. There was a central reservation so I couldn't turn into the street and as i was waiting at the lights to carry on until I could do a U-turn, I was waved over by a copper. Again, I'm not entirely clear why I was singled out for the 4th time but being so close to my final destination mightily pissed me off! I picked up something about a bus lane but there only was one lane so who know. Anyway, he wanted me to 'step into his office' which was a portacabin under the flyover to which I refused and stated I wasn't leaving my bike. I think this pissed him off as he could hardly start to demand cash in front of all the other traffic. So holding one of my lousy fake licence copies, he wrote me out a ticket and told me to pay at some police station. Yeah, sure! From there, it took at least half an hour buggering about in one way traffic until I finally arrived at the TAC office.
At the TAC office, they measured up the bike for making the crate and to my surprise, they allowed for me removing the front wheel and handlebars etc as Thai Airways were charging by volume weight so overall size is critical in keeping the cost down. I returned to the office a couple of days later and they had the crate parts made up. I removed all the parts to make the bike as small as I could (front wheel, mudguard, screen, mirrors, and handlebars) and wasn't looking forward to putting this lot back together. I was quite impressed with how small the final crate actually was (66Wx192Lx116H, total weight 250kgs including luggage and crate which was 60kgs), I really don't think they could have physically got it much smaller. Unfortunately we had to wait to get a flight booking and find out the final cost. I didn't get this until late Thursday afternoon and as TAC amazingly didn't take Visa, I had to take out the full amount in cash. My final bill was 30,500THB (around $900) which was a little cheaper than I originally thought but still pretty expensive.
Finally on Friday morning, and once I knew that the bike was actually leaving, I ran around near my hotel trying to get a flight for myself to Nepal, eventually getting one for 10,000THB which was flying that afternoon. However despite my rush, as I knew they flew at 1pm, it was delayed by 3 hours. The guy who sold me the flight ticket told me I was 'man very hurry', and I guess he was right. It's sometimes a bit stressful dealing with shipping bikes and sorting out flights in such as short space of time that thats all you can focus on. Overall, since getting back to Bangkok last Monday, it's taken 2 full working weeks to get the bike on a plane. But it's finally done though.
Anyway, on to Nepal....!
Oh, and the final scores for Thailand are:
Overlander 4 : Bent coppers 0
At the TAC office, they measured up the bike for making the crate and to my surprise, they allowed for me removing the front wheel and handlebars etc as Thai Airways were charging by volume weight so overall size is critical in keeping the cost down. I returned to the office a couple of days later and they had the crate parts made up. I removed all the parts to make the bike as small as I could (front wheel, mudguard, screen, mirrors, and handlebars) and wasn't looking forward to putting this lot back together. I was quite impressed with how small the final crate actually was (66Wx192Lx116H, total weight 250kgs including luggage and crate which was 60kgs), I really don't think they could have physically got it much smaller. Unfortunately we had to wait to get a flight booking and find out the final cost. I didn't get this until late Thursday afternoon and as TAC amazingly didn't take Visa, I had to take out the full amount in cash. My final bill was 30,500THB (around $900) which was a little cheaper than I originally thought but still pretty expensive.
Finally on Friday morning, and once I knew that the bike was actually leaving, I ran around near my hotel trying to get a flight for myself to Nepal, eventually getting one for 10,000THB which was flying that afternoon. However despite my rush, as I knew they flew at 1pm, it was delayed by 3 hours. The guy who sold me the flight ticket told me I was 'man very hurry', and I guess he was right. It's sometimes a bit stressful dealing with shipping bikes and sorting out flights in such as short space of time that thats all you can focus on. Overall, since getting back to Bangkok last Monday, it's taken 2 full working weeks to get the bike on a plane. But it's finally done though.
Anyway, on to Nepal....!
Oh, and the final scores for Thailand are:
Overlander 4 : Bent coppers 0
No comments:
Post a Comment