I rode from mainland (northeastern) China - Laos - northern Thailand and return.
Departed China 2nd Jan '15 and arrived CR 5th Jan.
Departed Thailand 1st March arrived back home in China (6am) 4th March.
I rode non-stop the first ~48-50hrs (both directions) as I managed to get onto the G60 expressway near Jiande city (300km / 5hrs away from my home) and intended to attempt to stay on the G60, until I was required to get off by the traffic Police - which didn't happen fortunately on the ride down. Naturally I had to stop for petrol as well as a couple of power naps in the early hours after 18 hours and 42 hours riding. I was tired and knew it, but no hotels to get a room in on the expressway (besides I was not meant to be riding on it). Serious case of monkey butt. I bought a sheepskin to sort that out for the trip back before departing Thailand - worked a treat.
Completed 3900km in the first 48-52 hours.
22,500km total distance travelled in the whole trip.
Bike '14 G650GS.
Used GarminXT on my ol' WinMo 6.5 HTC HD2 phone for the outward journey and OsMand+ on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (Android) for the GPS on the way back. No issues with map offsets on the OsMand+ in China on the return leg. I did carry a map book, and my collection of GT-Rider maps for Thailand.
I bought 2 sets of Metzler Karoo 3's from Cockpit CM which were more suited to the on and off road trails including some technical single track. Both Chin and his wife (Cockpit owners) were fantastic and the prices were the best I could get, and I did shop round for prices... CR Big Bike Rentals, Pirelli CR, BNS Burning CM, & Barcelona BMW Motorrad. Cockpit were the best.
I even went so far as buying extra Karoo 3's (2 additional rears and 1 front) which I bought back to China, since the prices were better than China pricing.
The spare tyres were shipped from Cockpit via the bus to CR which I collected from the ol' CR bus dept.
To get the tyres to my home in China, the tyres were strapped onto a mates CRF250 (his offer) and we rode together from CR - Chiang Kong border (bridge) crossing, rode on up through Laos and into China to Xishuangbanna in Yunan where we stayed the night in a hotel. Tyres were dropped off to a freight forwarder and shipped to my home near Ningbo the next morning.
My friend turned round on his CRF250 and rode back with a small group of Chinese riders heading to Thailand that had arrnaged to meet at the hotel the previous night.
I then started the non-stop ride back to Ningbo.
Managed to stay on the G60 expressway until the last 350km (about 2 and a half hours from home according to my GPS). Very heavy traffic in two locations after passing through the Zhejiang border toll station - where one cop made a serious effort to chase me on foot. At the second of the multi-lane nose to tail stationery traffic, I was caught by the Police (who were pleasant enough) and eventually escorted off. The remaining 350-380km became a greater distance and took me 8 hours to complete. Anyway, really liking the Karoo 3's and recommend both Cockpit (who also offer basic servicing on MC's e.g. oil/filter change) as well as Barcelona BMW Motorrad.
Luv'd the riding in northern Thailand once again (rode for 2 months Jan + Feb '14 on a CB500X - 15000km), and am very envious of how great it is there compared in Thailand (despite what some expats say) to the situation for motorcycles/motorcyclists and quality of life in general in mainland China. Sorry but IMO Thailand outranks China by a very wide margin on the quality of life index.
Cockpit for example offer a great friendly service and actually balance motorcycle tyres. Very few tyre shops offer that option in China, certainly never found a car tyre shop that does, besides few want/willing to handle motorcycles tyres - period. Actually I've had many instances where motorcycle tyres have been way over inflated in China. Cockpit were fairly spot on.
