Hiring scooters when travelling overseas: Why scooters are the best (and worst) form of transport

Try this at home. Definitely, try this at home.

Before you make the commitment to hire a scooter overseas, try it at home. Practice. Because the last thing you want to do is turn up in another country with foreign rules and different styles of driving and expect to jump on a dodgy old scooter with no experience at all and be good at it.

It'll end badly. It'll end with a "Thailand tattoo" – a burn on your leg from an exhaust pipe. Or something worse.

But that doesn't mean you should forgo the scooter experience entirely. It means you should get some practice at home, and then when you're overseas, go for it. Because, if you know what you're doing, this just might be the best form of transport around.

Bear with me here. Scooters can seem a little silly to the uninitiated. They're not tough enough to be a motorbike; not cool enough to be a bicycle. They look dangerous, or flimsy. People crash them all the time. You can't take them on a highway. You'd be crazy to ride one in a busy town.

And all of those things are true if you don't know what you're doing. If you do, however, then the travelling world has just opened up in a big way.

Scooters, you see, are the ultimate freedom. They're the chariots of the people. They're joy and they're convenience; they're independence and affordability. Maybe I'm getting a little carried away here, but if you've ever hired a scooter overseas and got through the experience safely, then you'll know what I'm talking about.

This is fun. Instead of relying on public transport or paying for cabs or just schlepping around on foot, with a scooter you're suddenly free. And yet you're still part of the society you're riding through. You're not closed off like you would be in a car or a bus. You're seeing the sights, smelling the smells, living the life.

The obvious place to hire a scooter while you're travelling is South-East Asia. The humble scooter is the region's most popular form of transport, and you're just fitting in by riding one. You'd be nuts to tackle this in, say, Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City. Once you're out of the busy metropolises though, a scooter is the way to travel.

You can cover greater distances than you could on a bicycle, or on foot. You can see more and experience more than you would in a car or a bus. This is travel with the people. It gains you respect.

So you roar around the back roads of Laos on your old Honda. You putter around Chiang Mai. You get down and dirty in Dalat. You ride away from the banana pancake trail and meet people and see things you otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to do.

Those are the obvious places for scootering adventure. But it doesn't have to end there. Two of the best scooter trips I've ever taken haven't been in Asia at all, but in the spiritual home of the scooter: Italy. I've done a week in Sicily and a week in Sardinia, and both have been amazing.

Is there a better way to see an Italian island than on a Vespa? I doubt it. Sicily, admittedly, is fairly nuts. You have to stick to the back roads, and even then people drive like lunatics. You have to be on the alert all the time. Still, it's a blast.

Sardinia, meanwhile, is a wonderland of quiet country roads that wind through rugged hills and along stunning coastlines. Every now and then a car passes you, or a gang of holidaying Swiss motorcyclists kitted out in leathers cruises by on their BMWs – but most of the time you have the road to yourself. You stop in at little villages for a coffee. You go for a swim in the Med when you get too hot.

That's the beauty of a scooter trip. Freedom. Fun.

But there are still precautions you have to take. Don't hire a cheap, crappy bike. Make sure it's reliable. Read reviews online. Pay more if you have to. And take your own safety equipment. In some countries you'll get the equivalent of a construction workers' hardhat to use as a helmet. In other places you'll get nothing at all. Take your own helmet, and gloves, and a jacket.

Do your research on local conditions. Know the road rules, and the state of the streets. Get a local SIM card for your phone so you can use it as a GPS. Try not to ride during rush hours. Avoid big cities. Know what the traffic conditions will be like. And check your travel insurance fine print: some insurers won't cover you for riding a scooter, even as a passenger, without paying extra.

Do all of those things, and you're onto a winner. You'll have some of the best times you've ever experienced overseas. Just as long as you've already tried it at home.

Have you hired a scooter overseas? How did it go? Would you do it again? Leave a comment below.

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