Rhodie wrote: [quote quote=NDSinBKK]My out-of-the-box solution to this "problem" would be to register the vehicle in the province where you DO live. This is perfectly doable, and in my experience the Thai authorities are quite capable and willing to do this.
Incidentally, the same problem applies to any other bike, as far as I know. If you buy a bike that is registered in another province, you have to transfer the registration to the one you live in.
This would appear quite logical and the most appropriate of solutions were it not for our living in "Amazing" Thailand.
Obviously for totally legal bikes this should present a great problem,
beyond the hassle of getting all the required paperwork.
A number of riders owning "grey" imports, but wishing to have registration & green books,
have been unable to acquire registrations in Chiang Mai,
where authorities are on the look out for bikes which have been restamped and have recycled greenbooks.
One solution is to acquire registration books and plates out of Bangkok - costing anywhere between 30-80k.
This presents a potential problem on resale, as it is quite possible in the current more stringent climate of changing
and becoming even more difficult of owning a bike with dodgy papers.
Should things change even further, it has the potential of leaving the owner with an almost unsellable machine.
I knew I was missing something! Rhodie, You seized on it - I was thinking only of bikes with a proper pedigree, i.e., green book.
I looked at a LOT of motorcycles before buying the GS, and one of the criteria was that it have a squeaky clean green book, which costs significantly more.
"Grey" is another word for illegal, which does not come as any surprise to anyone who has one. Thailand has been progressively cutting off the oxygen for that kind of ownership. As you have pointed out, owners, buyers, and sellers need to be aware that they are, indeed, sitting on something that's nearly unsellable. That's not a revelation and I would not blame Thailand for that.
My advice is to buy bikes that have the proper pedigree, and accept the additional cost that goes with it. If that means buying less bike for the equivalent baht outlay, then so be it - those are the rules of the game.
Incidentally, Thai people demonstrate on a daily basis that any necessary task from conveyance to cargo hauling can be done with 200cc or less. It is very rare that you see a large displacement bike doing any "work" - they are an indulgence, and they are taxed in a manner that is not dissimilar to the so-called "gas-guzzler" tax put on vehicles sold in the US that don't meet minimum fuel consumption standards. In a world in which climate change is an increasingly big deal, discouraging anything that uses more non-renewable resources than necessary is actually a rational policy. I'm regularly amazed at the new announcements of 600hp, 300+km/hour motorcars...tick tock, tick tock...
