FAQ
Questions before you rent a vehicle
In Thailand everyone drives on the left side of the road, this will not be a surprise if you are living in a country like:
- Australia
- England
- Ireland
- Scotland
- Cyprus
- Japan
- Australian
- India
- New Zealand
- South Africa
- Malaysia
- Hong Kong
But if you are not keep that in mind, you need to stay on the left hand side of the road. If you are having trouble remembering where to go, then you can always play it safe and follow the car or bike in front of you, there is a 99.9999% chance that they know where to stay on the road.
Safe travels!
Strange question, but YES ALWAYS! under no circumstance should you not drive with a helmet. Most accidents happen close to ones home where people are most comfortable and relaxed, so no matter where you are or what your doing keep your helmet on.
To be honest, they are relatively good. There are the occasional pothole here and there, but overall the roads are well paved and cared for. It is the drivers you need to worry about.
This is where things get a little hazy, although there are a number of laws in place to ensure safe and considerate driving there are a number of drivers that choose not to follow them. That being said you should always drive defensively and carefully obey the common sense laws and always be considerate to other drivers.
Recently Thailand just put into effect a new mandate requiring all foreigner drivers entering Thailand who wish to drive a motorbike or car to show proof of compitenance, ie have an international drivers license. That being said if you do drive in Thailand without an international license there is a 95% chance you will have no trouble and will only be required to pay a 500thb fine. Although if you don’t want any trouble and want to follow the rules truly, then obtain an international drivers license prior to leaving your home country.
Yes of course, and we strongly recommend it if you have never driven before or if you have not driven in a number of years. We can arrange anything from a simple 30 minute refresher course to a full half day driving course where we can show you some of the nearby highlights of the town.
Always be polite towards the locals officials, The police typically set-up road blocks where they check everyone going through them, mostly they are looking for drivers not wearing helmets so this another reason you should ALWAYS wear your helmet. If they catch you not wearing it the fine is usually 500THB which can be paid to the office on the spot.
There are a number of locations in Krabi which you can visit by motorbike, please visit our “unseen” page for some locations to visit, otherwise ask us about some more specific locations you might have heard about.
No, we don’t require to keep your passport while you are renting one of our scooters, we will ask for a copy of your passport as well as a monetary deposit. The deposit series with each different bike but is usually around 3,000THB
Preparation
Our bikes are routinely maintained to ensure they are in top notch condition, in the unfortunate event when a bike doesn’t work properly please call us immediately and we will come to assess the situation, in most cases we will bring a substitute bike for yo to sue while we repair your rented bike. If the issue is caused by an accident which you had, then we will go to the repair shop together to fix the bike to it’s state prior to renting.
Flat tires can happen, especially if your tire pressure is low and you are driving on rocky dirt roads. In the unlikely event which you are to get a flat tire, then please visit any local motorbike repair shop, they can all tire sizes in around 30 minutes, for this service the prices range slightly but the price is usually around 150-170THB.
If you are driving a bike with less than 30,000 kilometers on the odometer, then a safe time when to change the oil is once every 1,000 kilometers. If you’re driving a bike with more than 40,000 kilometers on the odometer, then changing the oil once every 600-800 kilometers is a more safe option.
When talking about the gear oil, it’s recommended you change this ever second time you change the ending oil, so lets say you are on a bike with 18,000 kilometers and change the oil at 19,000, 20,000 and 21,000 kilometers, you should also change the gear oil at 19,000 and 21,000 kilometers. It’s not recommended to change the gear oil as frequent as this but we always air on the side of caution when it comes to our engines.
Breaking the law in Thailand, well we all don’t intend to do so while riding the Thai streets, but who knows maybe it’ll happen to a few of us and while we’d rather not think about this unfortunate event it’s best we stay prepared and know whats going on in the event that we get stopped ask asked to fork over a few baht.
Generally if you are caught breaking the law by doing some of the following things the going rate is 500thb:
- Driving without a helmet
- Driving with proper bike registration
- Diving without a valid drivers license
- Driving without an international drivers license (if you are a foreigner)
- Driving under the influence of alcohol
If you are caught having an accident and/or damaging property the fine is typically 500thb + you need to plan on paying for repairing what/who you have damaged.
In the unlikely event that you are stopped and asked to pay a fine which is not above stated then it is always best to ask for a proper citation in written form, as sometimes police offices are caught extorting money out of tourists and when asked to document their violation, they will stick to the books in their fine assessment values.
There are many great things about driving a scooter in Thailand, but we would have to say without an issue that it’s the freedom one enjoys when on 2 wheels cruising the countryside. They are easy to park anywhere, can be driven in all types of weather, can go really fast if asked to (many bikes can hit speeds of 100+Km/hr easily), they can carry a lot of passengers at one time, although we never recommend it, in a pinch you can load a bike up with as many as 4 people… They are cheap and reliable means of transportation throughout Krabi.
When renting a scooter in Thailand it’s important to know for how long you’re getting the bike for right? Many times people are coming to Krabi and land in the late afternoon getting to their hotel in the early evening and want to rent a bike but don’t want to pay for a full day rental when you’ll only be using the bike until the early morning. Well not to fear, at Krabi Moto Rentals when you rent for 1 day (or longer) we always calculate our rental period on a 24 hour clock, so if lets say you take a bike Monday at 6pm and want to use it for 3 days, then we would arrange the collection time on Thursday at 6pm. Don’t be shy to contact us about late day rentals we can deliver to you nearly anytime you’d like.
The bikes are most typically new when we buy them but right after they are entered into our rental pool they become used right away. That being said we keep our bikes in great shape, all oil levels are checked and tunes up’s are done regularly so although our bikes are used they are in top shape.
The only bike we have that has three wheels on it is the Yamaha Tricity, it’s a nice 150cc bike but the additional 3rd wheel does not change the dynamics of the bike at all. The 2 front wheels turn and tilt together, so it really feels like your driving a two wheeler for rent. The vast majority of the bikes in our fleet are two wheelers for rent.
Unfortunately as Koh Lanta is over 100 kilometers away from our main office we don’t offer delivery services to Koh Lanta at this time. For Koh Lanta Scooter hire we recommend you get in touch with local branches on the island. We can however offer you airport delivery and you can then drive yourself to Koh Lanta and they driver back to the airport where we can pick up the bike from. So we cannot deliver scooters to Koh Lanta, but we can get you a scooter if your going to Koh Lanta.