Best way to travel from Vladivostok to Beijing or Kharbin

Question

Hello all,

Myself and a friend wish to travel from Vladivistok to Beijing. We hope to do this around the 17,18,19 or 20th of March this year.

What are our options?? we wish to go by land (bus or train) to keep costs down, however im having a hard time finding this sort of information online.

If anybody replies can you please include a link and perhaps costs involved? If anybody has done this trip i would love to hear about your experiences!

Cheers!!

Jason

Answer 1

This blog post tells a story about a Russian guy traveling from Vladivostok to Kharbin: http://mishka.travel/blog/index/node/id/2860-nachalos-vladivostok-harbin-kitai/

Basically, his experience was that there are trains, but it's impossible to buy tickets for them (no availability), so it's much easier to get a bus. You can go to the bus station (avtovokzal) and there's a special "Chinese tickets office" ("kitaiskaya kassa") where you can buy the bus tickets to Kharbin. They cost about 2500-4000 R ($50) one way, the trip lasts about 16-20 hours. From Kharbin it's pretty easy to travel to Beijing with a bus or train.

Answer 2

Hi Jason,

I have found only one trai from Vladivostok to Harbin on 20 Mar but there are no available tickets on it. You should find out about the buses to Harbin when you are in Vladivostok. There are some private companies which provide charter bus trips. You may try this company http://www.asia-business.ru/prom/?p=16

From Harbin there is a railway to Beijing. Trains in China are cheaper than buses. It will be adventurous trip, not easy to manage in China. Buy the time-table of their trains and try to understand the names of Chinese cities.

Answer 3

Hi, I am investigating this option also as I would like to travel via Vladivostok rather than on the Trans-Manchurian. I am intending to travel in the opposite direction (ie from Beijing to Vladivostok and on to Moscow).

The Lonely Planet TSR book mentions a weekly or twice weekly train from Harbin to Vladivostok but I agree that there's little mention of it elsewhere. If you find anything more about that could you please post it here?

A viable alternative option might be to take a return trip to Vladivostok from Ulan-Ude before or after the Trans-Manchurian, but this does seem like a lengthy detour.