Shipping a Bike from Ireland to Korea

humbert

I'm out east at the moment doing the ESL things and despite the fact that people drive like drunken hyperactive children here I miss my bike (I'm actually shocked by how much I miss it).

Beacuse bikes are either complete BSOs or very expensive(and small) I'd love to be able to ship my bike from home.

Now I don't think this is feasible as the bike when new was only worth 600 Euro and from my own research shipping would cost about 400 which wouldn't make sense but I thought before I paid through the nose for something here I'd put the question ye folk...


Sentimental P.S.
Being out here is made be realise how amazing it is to be able cycle out to the Wicklow Mountains in 20 minutes, the fields, the quiet roads, the silence, the beauty of the place.

biketard

humbert wrote: »

I'm out east at the moment doing the ESL things and despite the fact that people drive like drunken hyperactive children here I miss my bike (I'm actually shocked by how much I miss it).

Beacuse bikes are either complete BSOs or very expensive(and small) I'd love to be able to ship my bike from home.

Now I don't think this is feasible as the bike when new was only worth 600 Euro and from my own research shipping would cost about 400 which wouldn't make sense but I thought before I paid through the nose for something here I'd put the question ye folk...


Sentimental P.S.
Being out here is made be realise how amazing it is to be able cycle out to the Wicklow Mountains in 20 minutes, the fields, the quiet roads, the silence, the beauty of the place.

Hi humbert,

I'm out in Taiwan at the moment (well, I say "at the moment" but it's coming on 7 years now). I brought a bike with me, but since then I've bought two others. Both of these were bought off a local ex-pat forum from other foreigners heading back to their home countries. Would there be something similar you could look into in Korea? It's certainly the most cost-effective solution I can think of.

I have a couple of friends here who did the ESL thing in Korea before coming over to Taiwan and they might know of such a site if you need that info.

humbert

Thanks that's very good advice. Actually I looked for many second bike shops/sites but didn't consider the ex-pat esl forums and having looked at Dave's ESL Cafe there is a Buy/Sell forum.

Part of the problem in Korea is that there absolutely isn't a cycling culture and the people that do cycles almost exclusively use mountain bikes. I flew here Lufthansa and there costs were prohibitively expensive (from the site, I didn't ring up because I wasn't completely sure I'd be able to store/use the bike here).

I'll peruse Dave's ESL Cafe and see if I have any success.

Any info from your friends would be very welcome

Thanks again.

biketard

Yeah, I think that's where I'm lucky being in Taiwan. There's a pretty big, and growing, bike culture over here. It's a great place to cycle (well, maybe not in the city centre, but you can get out of there pretty quickly), and of course so many bikes are actually made over here, so people are generally quite proud of that fact.

Anyway, back to Korean forums, you already know the most popular one (Dave's ESL Cafe). I found a couple of others but they're complete crap. This one will be of no use at all for finding a bike, but you might find it interesting anyway:
http://www.koreanbloglist.com/index.php

If I find out about any others I'll let you know.

humbert

Korea has Samchuly who make cheap and nasty bikes. The whole country is on them and it cannot be helping cycling culture at all. They are trying to encourage cycling and there are some nice paths but in the city all I've seen is red lines painted on footpaths, often too narrow to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians.

I've also noticed craigslist have a Seoul forum. I didn't even know what craigslist was until it was in the news over the recent scandal.

Thanks for the blogs too. Some interesting topics mentioned.

kenmc

humbert wrote: »

I'm out east at the moment doing the ESL things and despite the fact that people drive like drunken hyperactive children here I miss my bike (I'm actually shocked by how much I miss it).

Beacuse bikes are either complete BSOs or very expensive(and small) I'd love to be able to ship my bike from home.

Now I don't think this is feasible as the bike when new was only worth 600 Euro and from my own research shipping would cost about 400 which wouldn't make sense but I thought before I paid through the nose for something here I'd put the question ye folk...


Sentimental P.S.
Being out here is made be realise how amazing it is to be able cycle out to the Wicklow Mountains in 20 minutes, the fields, the quiet roads, the silence, the beauty of the place.

My bro is out in there too, in Daegu, he bought an XLarge Scott <somethingOrother> there a few weeks ago, something around the 500 euro mark I think.

foodworm

Hello,

My name is Hoon. the Korean guy who already stayed in Ireland, and sometimes I visit this website to look at what is happening in Ireland nowadays.

Happy to look at your post which is relevant with my country, and would like to give some tips.

As a viewpoint of Korean, it will be really expensive to take your bike to my country as other people already said.

You can purchase the new bike around 100Euro at the bike shop, so it will be much more effective for you.

I am living near Seoul area, the capital of Korea, and I can say that ths situation of bike road is still developing nowadyas, and many Korean people use their bike to commute or do leisure. But don't know much about the other cities situation.

Hopefully my comment could be helpful, and please let me know if you have any questions.

My e-mail address is <snip> and any kinds of inquiries are really welcomed.

-from S.Korea
Hoon

Beasty

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Thanks

Beasty