Vladivostok to Canada/USA via S.Korea
 

Hi guys,

A friend and I are currently in Sevorobaiskal, Russia about to start riding the BAM road down to Tynda. From there we will ride the highway down to Vladivostock so we expect to be there by 10th July at the latest but quite possibly slightly earlier.

We have two bikes and we need to somehow get them to either Anchorage, Alaska or Vancouver. We are obviously keen to keep the costs as low as possible but on the other hand we can't really afford to be sat waiting for 40 or 50 days for the bikes to arrive should we ship them over.

So my questions are this:

What is the recommended method to use? It sounds like we may need to take the ferry down to South Korea first. I have been quoted around $800 USD for one person and one bike just for that leg of the journey down to S.Korea. This was from a guy called Yuri Melnikov from Links LTD.
Is this the cheapest option we have or should I be looking elswhere?

Will anybody be in the area at that time attempting the same crossing who will be willing to team up to try and reduce the total costs?

I understand Wendy Choi is a good contact to speak to. Does anybody have her most recent contact details?

Thanks in advance for any responses. We may be off the radar for a short while whilst we tackle the BAM road but should hopefully be in Tynda in the next 10 days maximum where I will jump on any responses.

Pete

$800 for the ferry from Vlad to Sokcho is nuts!

Here is every detail I could remember of how it was when I did it in 2009, including prices etc

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ancouver-44834

Things may have changed since then.

+1 on Wendy Choi

That ferry doesn't run any more it seems.
DBS Cruise Ferry goes to Donghae, Korea then on to Sakaiminato, Japan.
Their tremendous increase in freight (vehicle transport) fees has made the alternate route via Sakhalin much more popular for Japanese riders this year.
Even some of the road bike crowd is going that way.

Things change quickly!

The Sokcho ferry seemed so busy it's hard to imagine it stopping. I suppose it has actually been longer than it feels since I was out that way.

$800! Ouch!

Nicole {DDOOTT} Turpie {{AATT}} lei {DDOOTT} ca

earlier this year, i emailed everyone i could find online, trying to find every way to ship my bike from vancouver to vlad. and the only person who was the most helpful, and didnt get mad with my endless stream of questions was Nicole.
she had the best options of ship transport from van. to vlad, via busan. and the price was good. she managed to find a freight ship from korea to Vlad, and a container ship from Van. to busan.
i had contacted wendy choi, about costs for me and the bike from busan to vlad, and thought that us$1500+ was unrealistic. as i remember, nicole said that it was cdn$1700 (sea) from vancouver to vlad (not incuding vlad broker)

give her an email,

i found her email from a previous traveler who posted his experiences of using her company to ship his bike on the same route (found here on this site)

Big thanks. We just made it to Vladivostok. I'm on the case now.

Hi Pete
please would you keep posting any up date you have on this. there are a few bikers arriving in Vlad in the next 2 weeks that need bikes shipping over to Canada / USA , so any info would be very gratefully received.

Many Thanks

Dazzer and Leigh

Yeah of course. As it stands, sounds like the cheapest option is to head to south Korea first. Will keep you posted though.

Thanks Pete.

Quick update. No good info just yet.
 

Ok, we're in vlad now. Been here two days. Everyone is telling us the cheapest thing to do is to take the ferry to south Korea then arrange shipment from there. It seems a ticket for 1 person To south Korea and no further(not bike) is around 200 us dollars. Nobody can give me a set price for exactly how much the total will be for us and the bikes but we spoke to two Estonian guys who recently did it and cost them clost to 1000 euro for one person and one bike. Sounds extortionate but still exploring. Update to follow when I know more.

Give me till Monday for a proper update.

Pete

Im the Estonian who just did it two weeks ago and posted the solution to the other forum over here (see answer down here). Seems like either we are stupid or money devaluated recently - its not as cheap any more for shipping the bike on tha route.
You can find some cheap plane tickets: from Seoul to Seattle the ticket was about 1200 usd. ... But i searced and waited and the best solution was Seoul-Tokyo-Manila-Honolulu-SanFrancisco ... About 900 usd till now, been couple of nice days everywhere ... but miss my family, buddy and bike...

Hi all!
Thanks SeoulJoe for very useful information! Unfortunately we didnot meet you on the road but according to Yuri's information you headed to UlanBator when we were on the road to Vladivostok. Hope you had lot of fun ;).
Anyway we chosed the hard way to get from far-east to US. Easier and chepaer would have been send the bikes directly from Vlad to Seattle with Yuris container (approximately 5500 usd per container olus 200usd per bike)


We managed to get the tickets for Eastern Dream (vlad-donghae) from the ferrystation but we were just lucky. They are sold out for weeks. Yuri Melnikof helped with customs in Vlad. Ist incredibly lot of time/money/papers and i dont think anyone of us can do it by owerself. He can book the tickets as well. So take contact to him, he just is the only one who does it and he seem honest and nice guy.

The overall cost for the bike, personal ferry, customs russia and Korea and insurance was about 1200 usd per bike-person which is A LOT!

But its a lot of fun and South Korea is really nice country .. Allthough is not allowed to ride on the highways... So expect lots of funny situations in traffic. I do not think anyone forigner can do the traffic without gps over there!!

We tried hard to get the bikes directly to Anchorage with no success. We sent them to Seattle.

We did it via South Korea, Seoul.
Tried dhl, fedex, wallenius and some other options but ended up with

Joo Jung
movingworld@gmail.com
Mob: 010-3919-0832/++82 10 3919 0832
Tel* : 0505-719-2020/++ 82 505-719-2020
Member of IAM(HHGFAA)
Overseas Sales Department


The service with wooden boxes and customs clearance in US was 3900 usd per two bikes.

We contacted also Wallenius and it should have been a bit cheaper to use them but whe had a time limit and they didnot wanted to hold our bikes over certain time. They donot accept direct contacts, so its better to contact through Wendy Choi. As it was our first choise that didnot worked out we had good contact to Wendy and she is the person to suggest helping customs and paperwork for shure.

Now we are on hold and search the possibilitys to send the bikes from Seattle to Anchorage... If we will not find a reasonable solution we have to drive there and back, which is also not too bad... Anyone knows the optimal solution from Seattle to Alaska? They are still in wooden boxes, it might do it easier?