2-13-2008, Vladivostok, Far-Eastern Province, Russia

When Oleg asked Katya & Katya – the nicest and prettiest two girls this side of the Bering straight – if they might be so kind as to pick up an American coming on a bus from Zarubino, their first impulse, they later told me, was to wonder if I hadn’t perhaps teleported there. Having been to Zarubino, I can understand why they were so perplexed as to why any foreigners would be in such a place. I’m not so sure there is even so much as a village there. I saw some docks, a customs house and a few dirty old brick boxes. A few of these might still loosely be referred to as homes, the rest – a solid majority – were but shells of their former inglory.

To answer Katya & Katya’s question, the reason any sane foreigner would ever visit such a cold, windswept, barren, and ugly stretch Russia’s Pacific coast, is that it is the first port where South Koreans can reasonably expect to not get shot. It is also an hour from the Chinese border. Zarubino, such as it may be, it thus the port of call for the many South Koreans on their way to North-Eastern China, particularly those climbing the Chinese side of half-North Korean Baekdu Mountain.


Docked in Zarubino, ferry crusted in shiny frozen sea-foam.
The ferry from Sokcho actually goes all the way to Vladivostok, but it spends the night in Zarubino first – something I for one hope never to do. The bus, conveniently waiting outside at the docks (for where else would it wait?), leaves as soon as the last person clears the glacial paper shuffling of the three justifiably surly immigration officers.

At the Sokcho ferry terminal, they told me I could change dollars to rubles in Zarubino. They also told me I could use dollars to buy snacks on the boat. Both cold, heartbreaking lies. While changing money back into Won to buy coffee on the boat annoyed me, not being able to buy that bus ticket greatly worried me. Luckily, I’d already been adopted by some Russians I’d met on the boat.

It all started when a woman asked me to help her carry her bag of bricks and bowling balls up the rickety slippery 30 foot tall collapsible stairs onto the boat.
Floating Familymart.
(Carrying it back down was even more fun, the stairs by then generously crusted with frozen sea foam.) Later she and her (milfy if I might so say) new friend, Nadia, saw me fumbling with the little pinkplastic sewing kit I’d just bought at the on-board Family Mart with some unfavorably reexchanged won . I’d torn my currently only pair of jeans that morning, and thought I’d have a stab at a mend. Next thing I know, Nadia is right in my face demanding “———- jeans! ———- jeans!” where “———-” is an appropriately Russian sounding word accompanied by an enthuiastic pull down and remove motion.Well, when a woman like Nadia tells a man like me to take off his pants, refusing does not enter his mind. I quickly complied, throwing a blanket over my boxers. She and her friend then sewed my jeans for me. They later fed me dinner (they had packed bread, sausage, eggs, and cheese) and together with Dennis, the 22 year-old anglophone student, helped me fill out the immigration card.

The next day at immigration they insisted that I go first (“maybe there can be some problems”, in the words of Dennis. [I had no problems.]) When I couldn’t change money for the bus ticket, someone else changed $20 with me at a very generous exchange rate.

I saw on a map that it was 130kms from Zarubino to Vladivostok, which I found surprising considering that I’d heard the bus took four hours.
Frozen, brown, and four hours long.
As it turns out, the first two-thirds of the way were unpaved. The landscape continued to be just about as charming as it had been around Zarubino; frozen yet overwhelmingly brown.

Dennis let me (and just about everyone else on that bus, poor guy) borrow his cell phone to call Oleg, our absent host, to figure out just who it was that he’d roped into taking care of his snowboard-laden foreign friends for the evening. Oleg, a former schoolmate of mine in Dalian, was only coming to Vladivostok on the twelfth, but had left his keys with Katya & Katya to let us stay in his apartment for the night.


Katya & Katya
Katya & Katya got me at the bus station, paid for the taxi to Oleg’s place (the $20 I’d changed didn’t leave me much after bus fare), helped me to a bank, showed me downtown Vladivostok’s many wonders, and when we got some coffee, sneakily paid for that too before I got a chance – I’m learning that to pay for things with Russians requires either sneaky speed or bold aggression. And after all that, went back out to pick up Harold. That Harold and I arrived in Vladivostok within 3 hours of each other was somewhat of a miracle, considering he took an even stupider route than I did: from Hong Kong to Shenzhen to fly to Haerbin, and then an sleeper train to Suifenhe, a bus to a border crossing sufficiently remote that his was the first EU passport the guard on duty had ever seen. From there, another bus to Oussirysk and the final train from there.

Katya & Katya led us to some really tasty dinner, and then spent what must have been a solid twenty minutes negotiating with the taxi company, whose office was conveniently downstairs from Oleg’s apartment, convincing them to pick as up at 6:30, take us first to Katya’s apartment so we can give her the keys, and from there to the bus station where we could get our bus to the airport, about 45 minutes out of town. I don’t know what was quite so hard about setting that up, but I’m coming to accept that Russia is a land of wonders.

4 Responses to “2-13-2008, Vladivostok, Far-Eastern Province, Russia”

  1. Stephen Says:

    “prettiest two girls this side of the Bering straight” — Where are the pictures?!

  2. Stephen Says:

    Here’s a nice panoramic photo of Vladivostok:

    http://www.panoramio.com/photo/5819421

  3. Floyd Says:

    Glad you had a good trip to Russia far East. I have been going there 3 times a year since 2000 and I plane to retire there. Even have bought an apartment there. I take the Dong Chun ferry in July every year with my Harley to Ride around Russia for 30 days. Your blog is fairly accurate on some parts such as the buildings, roads and in some cases service. But very inaccurate with others. 1st you can change money on the ferry as I do it everytime I am on the boat. 2nd there is a money exchange office at the costums building in Zarubino. You just have to know where to go. The locals who work at the facility would of told you where it is located. 3rd the gold coast you claim as barren is your own opinion. I for one think it is one of the few unspoiled places left on earth. I go pheasant hunting and fishing there off the North Korean and Chinees borders every year. The Russian people are the most warm harted and freindly folks you will ever find. Once they open up to you and decide you are a friend then you are a friend for life.( I should know as I have lived and worked on just about every contenant there is for the last 30 years for the USA and have delt with many differnt people and thier customs) Russians will go out of thier way to help as I found out 2 years ago when I broke my belt on my bike and made a phone call and they drove 1200km round trip to dilever my belt to me. This was after my biker friends in Korea brought my belt to inchon airport found some Russians who were flying to Russia and asked them to take the belt with them and who to give it to. These Russians refused any money at all to do so. This is the Russian way and I have yet to find any other culture or ethnic group who would do this in all my travels around the world.

  4. askory Says:

    Hey Floyd, I’m glad to hear someone else found the Russians as hospitable as I did.

    I’m sorry if my writing wasn’t clear. I did change money on the boat, my complaint was that I was unable to use US Dollars at the FamilyMart on the boat, so I had to change the dollars that I’d changed in Sokcho back into won on the boat to buy things at the store. Also, I guess I failed to communicate effectively enough to figure out where to change money at the ferry terminal in Zarubino. Maybe you could to explain for anyone else who stumbles across this blog planning on going that way? Then they can, unlike me at least, know where to go.

    Thanks for the reply, it’s cool to know people are reading this!

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