harbin bus ticket in exchange for anything from HK

[nanananayeah]

hello - sorry i know this isn't much to do with learning chinese or living in china, but i need some help with buying a bus ticket from harbin to vladivostok on the morning monday 16th May. i'll be arriving that same morning on the train from beijing to harbin station at 6:04am, and will need to get very quickly to the bus station (i believe it is the long distance bus station directly across the square from harbin station, but not 100% sure), my understanding is that the buses leave at around 7am for russia, and i want to make sure the ticket is bought in advance, and i have it in hand and can just sprint to the bus station and get on the bus with no hassle.

 

am coming from hong kong, so willing to bring anything within reason size-wise from HK in exchange (as long as it's legal ), or do any needed favours from HK, as well as of course pay for the ticket in cold, hard cash, plus your transport to and from the station to meet me.

 

if this is of interest to you please let me know! many thanks!!!

 

 

[eliaso]

In other words, you'd need someone to go do a round trip in advance and buy you a ticket. Then on monday morning, pretty early might I add, do another round trip to hand you that ticket. Assuming that you are indeed arriving at Harbin station instead of Harbin West and that your bus to Vladivostok leaves from the station opposite of Harbin station.

 

As I don't need anything from HK I have another suggestion for you - you can pay me 600 RMB for all the work involved, plus the ticket fee and transportation fees (around 30 RMB). This figure is calculated based on that one round trip and handling the affairs should take me around 1,5 hours. That means 3 hours of work if everything goes without a hitch. As teaching English pays around 150-200 RMB an hour in Harbin (for a non native speaker), plus the transportation, I use it as a measurement stick. It really doesn't make sense for me to work any cheaper than that and since those monday morning hours would indeed be pretty early, I'll just round it up to 200 an hour.

 

If you think that sounds a little unreasonable I guess you could do some self-reflecting. Or contact some travel agencies (travelchinaguide, ctrip and elong comes to my mind) and try to find out if they'd have a way to get you a ticket and deliver it to where ever you are staying in mainland before arriving to Harbin. It would indeed cost you some money, but I'd imagine it would still be cheaper than 600 RMB.

[onebir]

Perhaps a hostel or hotel near the station in Harbin would get you one; they often do travel bookings...

[roddy]

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if they want to see passport and visa when booking the ticket. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they just aren't able to take foreigners, although presumably you've researched that. (Edit - seems it's not actually a problem.)

[vellocet]

Bus tickets don't need a passport. 

[anonymoose]

600 RMB sounds reasonable to me, but by the time you're paying that on top of the fare itself, it may just be more worthwhile to fly.

[NotChinese]

Sounds like someone hasn't left themselves very much time to get from Hong Kong to Vladivostok?

 

The urgency is disconcerting.

[Shelley]

Sounds like someone hasn't left themselves very much time to get from Hong Kong to Vladivostok?

 

Nope it was probably doable, cos the OP wanted to travel two days ago, so when they first posted they had 2 weeks.

 

Wonder if they made it?

[NotChinese]

I don't understand why it had to be in such a rush though? All that meeting at 6am with pre-bought tickets etc...

[Shelley]

Oh I see, I have no idea either, don't suppose we will ever know