Day 14: Oppression and Un-information

Monday May 19 - MV Rus, Vladivostock Harbour

Finally we have boarded the ship and in a few minutes we will set sail for Japan. It has been a long, long day.

After saying farewell to Fizle and hugging her twice on the drizzled door step of the hotel, and seeing her safely into an unmarked taxi cab (she was told by the hotel receptionist to look for a certain licence plate number), I returned to the room and phoned the local travel agency.

The ticket which they had issued for the boat trip was extremely short on detail. Apart from the date of departure, the boat name, the route and the cabin number, there was nothing. No check in time, no details of where or how to check in, not even a departure time.

The travel agency is based in Vladivostock and yet the phone line sounded like it stretched to Africa, in the 1940s. I could just about hear the woman's meagre guidance: ‘Go to the sea station… at 1800… and look for office.’ But what time do I check in? ‘Go early.’ How early? She didn’t know. What time does the boat leave? ‘At about 10 pm.’ 'About?' I said that the schedule said six. ‘Maybe,’ she said.

This boat only makes one journey to Japan a week and the last thing I wanted was to spend another seven days in the grey, misty twilight zone of Vladivostock, with its pitted pavements, anarchic roads (people drive on the right but have right-hand drive cars imported from Japan) and marauding military police.

Even though Russia is nominally a democracy, uniforms are everywhere. The standard police look rather innocuous with their over-sized hats with red bands but the others are menacing. Some wear tight-belted leather jerkins, like U-Boat captains, with long truncheons hanging out the back, baseball-style peakd caps, and combat pants tucked into calf-length boots.

Others wear grey-black-blue-white camouflage and permanent sneers. And then there are those in olive green who seem to be a cut above the others. I am not sure which group has what responsibility but I have seen them stop people in the street, typically anyone who looks distinctly non-Russian (Chinese, Japanese, dark skinned, etc.) and inspect their passports with icy indifference.

This was more noticeable in Vladivostock than in Moscow, I guess because the latter is a tourist destination but also because of the former’s military importance, and because Vladivostock was, until 1991, a closed city. This meant that even Russians from other regions could not enter without a permit.

Even though there is an air of authoritarianism in Russia, I didn’t see a single CCTV camera. The UK, of course, has more than any other country so you could argue it is just as oppressive as Russia. At least Russia has the balls to be personally oppressive.

The bureaucracy is also oppressive at times. If you stay at the same place for three days or more, you have to register your stay with the authorities. Thankfully, the train didn’t count, and we only stayed at the Hotel Versailles for one night. I could have gladly stayed for another, just to readjust my body clock and to catch up on sleep, but I had a boat to catch. I just wished that I knew where and when and how to catch it.