RTW East to West: Ferry across the Sea of Japan...

The ferry from Donghae to Vladivostok across the Sea of Japan was our route into Russia. The three of us arrived at the ferry terminal about 9:30 Sunday morning as we had our bikes to load and that was the required call time for those with cargo. The ferry was scheduled to leave at 2pm. We knew there was at least one additional motorcycle traveler as Seoul Joe had put us in contact with Adbang, a Korean who was riding to Lake Baikal and back for his vacation. Adbang is a engineer for Kia Motors and has designed many of their models. When we arrived we met another Korean motorbike traveler named Junyoung. He was traveling through Russia all the way to Europe like us, although on a bit quicker schedule.

We were met by the friendly cargo handler and led to a small lounge and served coffee. Our paperwork was all laid out in neat piles for each of us. He had us check everything and sign and we were then led into the terminal reception area to pay. We got a pleasant surprise when we found out that passengers paying for cargo received a 50% discount on their passenger ticket plus a one level upgrade from economy to second class. After paying we all hung around and chatted looking over each others bikes and gear. This is what motorbike travelers do upon meeting. Everyone wants to see how the other is set-up in terms of bike, luggage, accessories, etc.

A short time later we were directed to ride the bikes into the cargo loading area. After standing around a bit waiting for all the cars to load we finally got to ride our bikes up into the cargo hold of the ferry. Kind of a sketchy hairball trip up the steep ramp to the second level but we all made it without dumping our bikes. We then had about an hour or so to kill before passenger loading so we went across the street to buy some supplies at the convenience store and have some lunch at a small restaurant across from the terminal. The rib bone soup was quite good. I think we were now over 50% favorable on our meal choices in S. Korea. We then headed to the terminal to board the ferry as it was getting close to 1pm.

The ferry demographics consisted of about 65% Russians, 30% Koreans and 5% other. The other was Ken, Mark, myself and one other American traveler from Oregon, a couple of Australians and two twin sisters from Holland. The ferry was supposed to hold 400 passengers but I don't think it was at 100% capacity. We had one empty bunk in our room of 8 persons. I'm glad we were upgraded as the economy ticket would have put us in community rooms on the floor with mats.

The ride was 22 hours but we sat at the port for about 3 hours before we were able to disembark. The 25 hours on the ferry were much more bearable than the 12 hour plane ride to Seoul. There was a bar, a restaurant and a nightclub on the boat. We met some fun Russians and Koreans and spent the afternoon drinking and socializing before the dinner buffet was opened. After dinner we were pretty fried and only made it a few more hours until dark and tried to get some sleep. The beds were a little hard and you could hear and feel the engines, but I slept pretty decent. The next morning we were able to grab some coffee and breakfast in the late morning. We had traveled two time zones so waking up at 8:30am meant it was 10:30am Vlad time. The boat was due in the port at 2:50pm so we only had 4 more hours to kill which we spent on the top deck looking at the many small islands as the ferry passed by. I don't know if we were lucky or the Sea of Japan is normally calm, but we had very little waves so the ride was pretty smooth.

It did take forever to get off the ferry as the Russians were instructed to disembark first. They only allowed about 20 or so people off the ferry and into the customs area at a time so we didn't get off until around 5:00pm. We breezed through customs and immigration fairly quickly and found a coffee shop inside the ferry terminal building with WiFi to get organized. We needed to make contact with our customs agent Yuri and Ilya, a contact Mark had lined up in Vlad through a coworker in Australia. We couldn't find either in the receiving area so hanging out in the coffee shop seemed like a good plan. It worked as Ilya soon found us and a short time later and Svetlana, Yuri's assistant found us as well. Svetlana quickly got us moving as the customs office would close soon and she wanted to get the paperwork sorted that evening so we could get the bikes the next day. She was super efficient and expedited all five of us by about 7:30pm. She then said we would meet back at the ferry terminal at 9:30am the next day and we would have the bikes. Easy peasey! We expected up to 3 or 4 days to clear the bikes from Russian customs. The $165 we were paying in brokerage fees were becoming a huge value!

We then went with Ilya who had arranged an apartment for us at $100 US per night. More great news as we had budgeted much higher for a hotel and we would only need 2 nights instead of 4 or 5. We got to the apartment, ordered some pizza and enjoyed Ilya's hookah water pipe on the balcony enjoying our 14th floor view of the city. We went to sleep excited that we would have the bikes in the morning. The plan was to get the bikes, stock up on some camping food provisions, hit an ATM to load up on some more Rubles and find some Russian SIM cards for our smartphones. We would enjoy a dinner out at Russian Island which was two bridges and land masses away and spend Tuesday night in Vlad. We weren't really looking forward to riding the bikes in Vlad because what we saw from the car was as bad or worse than Seoul from a traffic congestion standpoint. Vladivostok is also very hilly - reminds me a bit of San Francisco - so the clutch work would be challenging on the uphill in traffic.

Arriving at the Donghae ferry terminal.