Money in Vladivostok, paying dbs ferry to Japan
 

I believe we havr to pay the DBS ferry to Japan in cash, and since it is with a van and a family it is quite a lot of money.
I think you have to pay in USD but I'm not sure.

Does this mean I need to take this amount of USD from home?
Im guessing it will be hard to get so much dollars in Vladivostok.

And of course Im going to bring dollars on the trip. But I don't like the idea of driving around with 2500 dollar or something like that. Because I also need dollars for Uzbekistan

VTB ATMs in Russia will dispense up to RUB 100,000 (providing your bank allows such large withdrawals).

Then you can change this to USD at any of the hundreds of exchange offices around the city.

I usually carry 1000 to 2000 EUR as a decent sum in case of problems (losing all cards, sudden banking sanctions, major recovery operation in middle of nowhere etc).

Great, thanks for the quick reply.
In the mean time I also read a website about Vladivostok that says that there are ATMs in the city that dispense USD, although more rare then Ruble ATMs of course.

I'm thinking about bringing some Dollars and Euros. And carrying something like 1000 Euro or Dollar (or 500 of each) is of course reasonable, and in fact a good idea. Probably the bare minimum you should take with you.
But if I have to add the costs of the ferry on top of that, then to me that is just a large amount of money which I will not use for months on end, but have it in the car (which is a risk)

Not sure about the Stans, if I should bring more dollars than euro.
Uzbekistan is clearly about dollars. Tadjikistand and Kirgistan maybe as well, but I'm not going to spend much money there.
In the stans, I expect to be able to withdraw enough money from ATM's in the big cities.

ATMs are tricky in Uzbekistan in my experience. No problems withdrawing money in Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan though.

Hello:

Vladivostok is a big city, a very major city, and there will be no shortage of ATM machines that will accept your (presumably Dutch) ATM card and spit money out at you. I have been to Vlad many times and fetched money out of ATMs using my Canadian bank card.

Just be sure that you tell your home bank that you will be using the card in Russia, Japan, and other places you are going (this so they do not think it has been stolen), and have your bank increase your daily ATM card withdrawal limit up to whatever amount you think you might need to take out in one day.

As for having to pay in USD... that sounds very strange to me. Normally, ferry companies accept the currency of whatever country their vessels provide scheduled service to. DBS has scheduled service to Russia, they should accept rubles. At the very least, they should accept Korean won or Japanese yen.

I suggest you write DBS ahead of time, and see if they will accept your credit card. Or, see if you can make a bank transfer to them (from your Dutch account) ahead of time to pay the ferry cost. Withdrawing rubles from an ATM in Russia, then changing those rubles to USD, is going to cost you a lot of money in exchange fees: first from Euro to Ruble, then from Ruble to USD... and DBS will probably give you a poor exchange rate on USD, because they will eventually change the USD to won or yen... it is crazy, you will likely lose 15% on all those currency changes.

Michael

Possibly DBS could be charged for some things in USD, so having the customers pay in USD saves them conversion fees. Or someone is simply making money out of the conversion fees.
In any case .. I'd get DBS to confirm in writing the payment requirement - is a card accepted? If not is cash accepted and in what currencies?
Have a good trip.

Thanks for the input.

I have read that DBS requires cash, no cards. And I thought it was with USD but I cannot find it anymore, don't know where I read it.
I have actually emailed with DBS, but the sad thing is the lady on the Vladivostok side is totally unresponsive, whereas the lady on the Japanese side is very responsive (but she can't arrange stuff for us, because she is on the wrong side)

I would prefer to just withdraw large amount of Rubles at that moment and pay with.
Or some kind of Western Union to USD or whatever, so that I don't have to do a lot of costly currency changes. That would indeed cost quite some money.
And as said, I also don't prefer to take something like $2000 in the car, unused for 4 months.

I think it will be okay. I'm just bringing some dollars, of which a large part will probably spent in Uzbekistan.
I'm also bringing Euros so I have both currencies to change money on the road when not in cities with ATMs.

One more question: if you drive the main roads in Russia, for example Moscow to Volgograd, can some gas stations take credit cards?
This is easy and would make quite a difference in how much money to withdrawn from ATMs.
Of course they will not all accept it, and definately not when of the main road

Most Gas stations ( except they are really small ) take credit cards.

Russia is a civilized land and not stuck in the 70's

Thanks for confirming. I thought so. That makes it convenient.

Agreed. Based on my many visits to Russia, I would say they have moved forward up to about where everyone else was in the early 1990s. :)

Well, I do not agree to that.

So you think Russia is 25 back ?

Hello

Back in 2013 I also had to pay in cash in Japan.
Was a bit of a problem to find an ATM that took my cards.
Payed in Yen.

If DBS is a japanese company it's up to them to take rubel or not.

In Japan it's a car ferry like in europe, I drove my bike onto the ferry did the paperwork with someone there, DBS or custom I don't know. All on the day of departure.
In Russia it's something else.
They drove my bike off the ferry.
Needed Yuri to do the paperwork.
Arrived Monday 14.00h, had the bike on Wednesday at 16.00h.

Welcome to Russia.

Sushi

Russian gas stations take your Dutch bank card and you can pin!

The ATM with our Rabo card, only gives us 5000 rub. per transaction, so it will need multiple transactions to get big amounts of money.

This is what is emailed to us when we were in South Korea, when taking the DBS ferry from Donghae to Vladivostok: