We have breakfast on the ship before we arrive at the port, its very exciting as ropes are thrown ashore and the ship docks….…..we leave, my first time in Russia, it feels so very different even to South Korea, more western trappings stripped away..the text on buildings at the docks now totally incomprehensible and alien to my eyes….…..all of our Import and Export arrangements have been made with Links, all travel community roads lead to Links and for good reason……Yuri and Svetlana are totally reliable and make these things look easy (they are not)
We are met by Svetlana at customs….….wonderful to have her waiting there for us as we navigate through imigration. Svetlana speaks perfect English and is totally efficient and warm, telling us politly to sit down, handing us a document folder and in turn going through it with us…sign here…and here and here…we are getting the Rolls Royce service and its perfect.

With the documents all signed we head outside with Svetlana and Yuri swings into the parking area in his right hand drive van.

Did you know….

Thats odd….we notice the cars and vans, there is a mixture some left some right hand drive……Yuri explains 80% of vehicles in this part of Russia are right hand drive, this is a throwback to old Russian vehicles being replaced by Japanese imports, it used to be 95% and a major trade, now some new left hand drive cars are appearing but I guess right handers will be around for many years.……anyway Yuri takes us around the town, navigating through the heavy traffic….. first to get cash from the ATM (all in English) and then SIM cards for our phones, I buy first and then realise after I have the SIM that my phone is locked to EE (schoolboy error) I had simply ran out of time before I left the UK to get my private phone unlocked.
So 100 dollars later I am the proud owner of a nice little Huawei smart phone…Yuri Drops us off at the hotel and will pick us up at 09:30 in the morning, first we visit the customs office, its all handled by Svetlana with polite and friendly efficiency, Yuri is then there to pick us up again and we are taken to the insurance company, its the only remaining company in town that want to take on this risk for Motorcycles!We pay for the Insurance and head for a bit of sightseeing on the hills over Vladivostok.On our way back down we are told the bikes are cleared from customs and we can collect them.

We are given forms that must be handed in when we leave Russia and we must get new ones when we enter for the second time.

The customs union covers Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, so we will finally hand the second form in as we leave the Union countries for the last time.We go to a nondescript multi-storey car park and our bikes are wheeled out….sweet! All done by mid day less than 24hrs after we arrived.

We do a little sightseeing, the weather is not great so sorry no stunning blue sky pictures…

We meet Yuri in the evening with Justin a fellow Motorcyclist from New Zealand, at the time the World Cup was on, so much talk of football, England and even Bristol Rovers over a few beers, really good to spend time with Yuri after all these months communicating by email. You can contact Yuri at Ymelnik@links-ltd.com

We leave Vladivostok, I am dreading this leap into the unknown especially after the drama leaving Seoul.
As it turns out its OK, Gary’s navigation works very well as he pilots us out of the City, the roads are good and the further away from Valdivostok we get the less traffic there is…..nice!

The next phase begins…..

And so the last month has all been about getting to this point, getting documentation in place and moving our motorcycles across the Pacific. Getting the bikes prepared in Vancouver, shipped to South Korea and imported on temporary documents to Russia, its been expensive and intensive, but now that is all behind us….

Now there is a tantalising strip of land between us and home, OK its a rather long strip, a 17,000 mile strip and a lot of borders but its there, we have jumped from 8hrs behing the UK to 9 hours in front…..actually technically lost a day as we travelled across the Ocean.

We now head north into this vast country and discover the reality of life in Russia!