Moving abroad – maybe no good bike supplies – what do you take?

I’m moving to Phuket in Aug. and shipping my and the wife’s bike out.

I can’t seem to find any info on good bike shops and don’t want to be stranded bikeless because of gear failure.

What would you pack?

spares

pair of folding (for space)tires – not front / rear specific.
innertubes / puncture repair kits
chain
cables / outers / end-caps for both
lube
fork oil
polish (yep, I’m one of those)

tools

allen keys
fork pump
tyre levers
nipple key
chain tool

anything else?

A smile that you’ve escaped

More tools. The knowledge to build wheels and service forks an a link to http://www.chainreactioncycles.com

Oh no, its another country…

FFS

If its anything like anywhere else I’ve been in the Far East, just take a walk in your new neighbourhood and no doubt you’ll find a (or more likely, many) one-man type ops that’ll be able to fix anything, with next-to-nothing, for nearly nowt.

To be fair he’s moving from the Philippines IIRC, so it’s not exactly as you say Bruce.

That said, there do seem to be a number of bike shops in Phuket, including a Cannondale dealer, so they should be fairly well clued up.

Yep. Moving from The Philippines.

I can walk and find welders / fabricators etc very easily. Not exactly what you need for modern mountain biking.

realistically, what is likely to go wrong, start from that point.

yes a chain might snap, but if it is worn your going to need a new cassette as well.
spokes, my experience is that when spokes start going the whole lot will need replacing.
tyres, depends on what your running could be quite resilient, or could be cut up and trashed quite quickly.
Inner tubes, sealant, etc for puncture repairs. It is almost certain you will get a puncture at some point, depends where the nearest one man bike repairer is,

I know there is a big MTB scene in Chiang Mai and the guys there don’t seem to have any problems (although not much use to you down south), though if you plan ahead I CRC should deliver to Thailand.
Will ask some of the guys here in HK that ride there a lot to see if they can help and get back to this thread.

The mail order companies will deliver and locals know how to fix stuff, more make do and mend in Asia than we have got used to in our throw away society. I would take spares for most things that could wear out or break and remember its much more hot and humid so rust and water ingress will be more of a problem, Phuket is a pretty big place now with quite a lot of Westerners living their permanently so I think yiu’ll find more out there than you suspect. I lived in Singpaore and you get get pretty much anything you needed there with lots of shops catering for leisure cyclists, road and mtb