On my trip through south-east Asia I fell in love with motorbikes Vespa 150. And I started to think how to buy it. Back at home it is already vintage and expensive, in Asia it's common vehicle. And then it dawned on me! I'll buy it in Asia and drive it home. From original idea for purchase became a theme of my next expedition :o)

    The plan was to fly, on the start of year 2014, to Vietnam. Over there to buy second-hand these beautiful machines, and drive them back home. The trip is estimated to approx. 15000 km. It leads from Vietnam through Laos, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia all the way to Czech to my home in Horní Řepčice :o). In some countries is unclear, because of political situation, whether we will be able to pass through or not. A thanks to that the route will be very likely changed on the run.

   Thanks to the lack of finances we failed to make the journey in year 2014. Project is postponed for the beginning of year 2015. Meanwhile we had a lot of time to think how it will proceed. There was a question, what we will do when our Vespa conks out and just jokingly we said that we will come home then by a TukTuk, which is the most common Asian taxi. I really started to like that idea and so it came to joining two ideas. We will buy a TukTuk and drive it home. But the real fun is in the thing that we will work as proper taxi, and along the way we will pick up locals and drive them for our and their amusement. Of course we won't work totally like a taxi and so we won't drive people on order (that way we wouldn't reach our home ever), but we will drive them along our planned route. In return I will now and then make portraits of our passengers and possibly of their jobs, houses, simply whatever opportunity will offer. After the end of our journey I will arrange those pictures into an electronic book and publish it on internet. As a second means of transport and support vehicle will serve Vespa to us, whom we simply refuse to give up.

   Thanks to this plan we need to adjust also our route. In Vietnam there is no TukTuks  and so our starting point is capital city of Thailand - Bangkok. This place is swarming with those little buggers. Paradoxically it have some advantages for us, mainly in the fact, that we won't hopefully have to fight that strong bureaucracy as in Vietnam. But not to shorten the route too much, we will make a digression to Cambodia and Laos, which were on the original route.

The journey is planned for average 100km per day. Somewhere it will be tight deadline, but elsewhere I suppose it faster. I hope, that there will be plenty of space to solve unexpected problems. With this pace will the whole business take something like 5 months. My guess is, that I need to gather at least 250 000 crowns which means like 12,500 $ for two vehicles as minimum amount required. Without this amount it is not reasonable to even try. Of course the more money the better :o)

   We want to try to finance our journey with the help of so called Fundraising. It is a possibility to approach people with our project. The principle is such, that you create some project which you publish on internet on Fundraising server - the most popular in Czech is HitHit. On this project you set a destination amount, if this amount is reached, the author get it(lowered by some part destined for server provider), if not the money go back to contributors. In most cases there is some gift as a counter value. In our case it would be electronic book filled with pictures from the trip. As soon as we start the project, we will inform you in our blog.

Vintage Vespa 150 Sprint advertisement one of our desired ones

    Vespa 150 was produced from year 1955 in Italy by manufacturer Piaggio and basically it is stronger city scooter. Eastern Asia is swarming with these beautiful motorcycles. The ones we will use will be purchased somewhere on the market and they will be not somehow specially tuned. Of course we will buy some spare parts, so we will be able to fix some minor damages (for example a horn).

TukTuk in Bangkok Polished TukTuk riding through the streets of Bangkok

On the contrary TukTuk is wild beast with no laws and so there is not design given nor the horsepower. They are made by many companies and home-based manufacturers. It's design is not only different in every country, but often even in many regions, according to local fashion. Some types do carry passengers in the back, others in the front. The only common sign is maybe just that they have three wheels. With which one we will end up is not clear - we would have to adapt to our financial abilities.

   Our motivation on this trip is not to prove that it is possible (of course, that it is. Why else we will do it.). Not even some race with time.Nowadays, when the travelling is really easy, is this a little bit the return to real travelling in the style of old caravans. There is many similar projects, so what makes our expedition extraordinary? Maybe is it that we want to start our journey without big preparations. Because of the nature of our project. Our motorcycles won't be no shiny new pieces, but old used machines, with for example 50 000 km on the clock. It will be mainly about proving that we can make it. And that it is possible to manage it even on old motorbike without special modifications :o)

  I like to travel and this idea seems to me slightly crazy and really funny. I like to discover foreign cultures and I love to take pictures. Thanks to our own means of transport is easier to reach places, which are not visited by many tourists, and they are often more interesting than touristic attractions. And as one old motto says:"Journey is the goal" so in this case it is supposed to fulfil in 100%.