Finally managed to get the motorbike. After many many days of trying it all happened yesterday evening about 6pm. The paperwork was like nothing i have ever experienced before! Just for cusoms alone we handed over more than 100 A4 documents, all of which had to have official stamps and be approved by many different people. We made about 6 trips to the other end of town to the customs office and about double that to the office of the shipping agent. In the end we...

Still in Vladivostok! Cant get out! Well, there have been dramas with the arrival of our ship from Sth Korea. It took about 5 days extra, the international arrival dock was full so it went to the fishing dock first. Then we were waiting on documents from our shipping agent to take to customs. We need to get those documents stamped along with details of exactly whats in the container to pass through the customs inspection which can take a while. We then need som...

I have arrived in Russia! No dramas through customs/immigration and with much difficuilty found a hotel on my first night. Very different here compared to other parts of the world that are set up for backpackers. This place is DEFINANTLY NOT setup for this! Quite an expensive place to be, nearly as much as oz, first world, and kinda strange seeing European looking people speaking a completely foreign language again! The people look very different to the chinese, ...