We arrived in Vladivostok today after what was supposed to be a two day ferry ride (turned three days after a typhoon delayed us). We met a really nice couple on the ferry named Natalia and Silas. They're both graduate students at UCLA. Silas is working on a math PhD and Natalia is studying bio-chem (?). Anyway, they were both really fun and we're glad to have met them and spent most of our ferry trip with them. Silas and Natalia are heading for lake Baikal on the Trans-Siberian railway, then a plane to Moscow, and then a car to Belarus and then to Stonehenge for their friends' Wicken wedding. Natalia is from Moscow so I think they'll have an easier time navigating around Russia than we will.
Here's Silas and Natalia:
Back to our problem. We pulled into the port at 9am and then waited an hour or so for the border guards to let us off the boat. Everything was going great. We happened to be the very last in line and Ezra, Richard, and I each cued in a separate line. All three of us walked up to our respective counters at about the same time. Richard walked out the other side without any issues. Everything seemed to be going great for me too. The woman behind the counter was smiling which was a good sign. Meanwhile Ezra ran into a problem. The immigration agent flipped to Ezra's visa page and then looked up at him, then back at the visa, then up at him again, then called over to another immigration worker. She came over to the desk and looked at the visa, then at Ezra, then started talking quickly with the first immigration agent. Then they called a third immigration agent over. More confusion and frantic Russian. Pretty soon people started filing out of other rooms all to look at Ezra's visa.
Something clearly had been yelled from Ezra's desk to mine because my immigration lady's smile disappeared. She showed me the picture on my visa and said "you?" I was confused. "Yes." "No, you did this?" Then I realized what was going on. Back in the U.S., when Ezra came to Portland the night before leaving for Tokyo we were showing off our visas. Everyone noticed that there was a red rectangle with writing inside where there would normally be a photo. We didn't know what the writing said so we had a Russian speaking friend translate: "Not valid without photo." This confirmed what we had suspected. The visa company sent us our passports with one extra passport photo and no instructions. We didn't know why they returned one of our photos when they asked specifically for two, but now we understood. We had to paste the photo in ourselves. It was 11pm the night before leaving so we trusted our instincts and glue-sticked our passport photos into our visas. Apparently this was a huge mistake.
When Ezra and I discovered that Richard hadn't done this (while we were on the ferry) we convinced him that it was the right move. Richard found super glue, scissors, and an extra passport photo in his bag and doctored his visa as we had. Again, this was a terrible mistake.
Back to the Russian port. Pretty soon the Russians figure out that Richard must have pasted his own photo too because he was with Ezra and me. His passport was taken away and he was pulled back across the all important red line. The posse around Ezra disappeared into a back office with all of our passports as we watched the heavy medal doors slowly descend from the ceiling to block our entrance to Russia. A travel agent from the DBS Cruise Line (our ferry) found us and stayed to help translate. After about twenty minutes and a few questions from the immigration authorities we had our passports back in our hands with these conditions/warnings:
1. By tampering with our visas we nullified them. They are no longer valid.
2. We can enter and visit Russia but,
3. We cannot exit Russia with our current visas.
4. Once we exit we cannot re-enter Russia with our current visas (which were double-entry visas).
So that's where we're at. Our first priority is to obtain an exit visa. We heading to the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok tomorrow morning to figure out our options for that. Our second priority is to obtain a re-entry visa, or at least figure out how to do this. If there's no way to re-validate our current double entry visa, then we'll figure out if it's possible for us to get another single entry visa once we're in Mongolia. Worst case scenario we can't drive through Mongolia. Well no, worst case scenario we can't get the car through customs and our trip becomes really short (our car just left Japan bound for Vlad via roll-on roll-off shipping). But that's a whole 'nother issue that we don't have to worry about for a few days.
To finish the story, by the time we got our passports back the immigration office had closed. Some guy who seemed like the boss opened one of the medal doors via remote control and led us through. All the lights were turned off in the building so he led us room by room turning on and off lights as we went. Because everything was closed there was no customs inspection. We walked right past the X-ray machines and medal detectors and emerged out of the basement into the refreshingly cool air of Russia. I think we were all partially relieved because for a little while it looked as though we were going to be deported. But I think the whole event drained us. Coming out of the port we were all depressed and frustrated with our situation. Especially because we put ourselves here.
We found our hostel without much issue and met with our American contact in Vlad, Neal (Stephan's dad! Hey Stephan what up!), with only some minor delays. Neal has been extremely helpful. Today he helped us get a cell phone and set up a meeting with some local Russians who will bridge the language gap and help us with any problems we have with customs and getting our final list of supplies. The hostel that we're at houses about twenty people and two of them are Australians who ferried with us. They're riding BMW motorcycles to Europe via Mongolia and the -stans. They're expecting to run into problems with their motorcycles and Russian customs like we are with the car. Another problem for another day...
- Jack
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