Buying Roubles on Facebook: Mweru’s St Petersburg Chronicle

Mweru lives in Perth, in Australia, and travelled to St Petersburg in July 2026 on a regular tourist visa. She was going to a family wedding, but the logistics were entirely her own: she arranged everything from the other side of the world, crossed in at Narva, and arrived with a week’s worth of roubles that she had bought from strangers in a Facebook group back home.

When she sent it to me she apologised that it had ended up being more of a to-do(n’t) list than a chronicle. That is exactly what makes it useful. If you are also thinking of coming in through Estonia, read it alongside Leo’s chronicle and Michael’s five hours in the Narva queue.

What follows is Mweru’s own account, with her own tips and her own photos. She wrote to me again afterwards with the entry prices she had paid and an update on the border, and I have added both where they belong. Thank you, Mweru.

Approximate route of Mweru’s week. The dashed line is the border crossing from Narva into Ivangorod; the solid line is the journey inside Russia, including the trip up to Mandrogi for the wedding and the day out to Peterhof.

The boring admin, sorted before I left Perth

Even though I was meeting family and friends in St Petersburg, it was logistically a solo trip and I treated it as one, by trying to mitigate the lack of a safety net. That meant arranging as much as I possibly could before I even left home. So let’s get the boring admin out of the way first.

The visa: start two months out

Given the semi-icy diplomatic relations between Australia and Russia, I had to apply for a regular visa, and it was not a walk in the park. I cannot stress enough how important it is to follow the visa guide for Australians to the letter, and to get started roughly two months before your intended travel date. I got my visa within two weeks of applying, but I have heard it can take longer, and there is also a step-by-step on how to apply for a Russian visa in Australia.

Hotels, and the one card that finally worked

I booked my hotel through ZenHotels, and it was not straightforward. Even though the website states that Mastercard and Visa are accepted, my Australian credit cards would not work. Neither would my Wise card. The only one that worked was YouTrip, because it allows use in Belarus. Even then the payment was declined several times, and I got there through the sheer brute force of multiple attempts. If you are about to go through the same thing, read first how booking hotels and apartments in Russia with a foreign card actually works, because it is not the same as booking anywhere else.

Boat tickets, which were the easy part

To book my hydrofoil to Peterhof, the river and canal tour, and the night boat tour to see the drawbridges, I used Nevatrip, and it accepted my regular bank card without a fuss. That was the one payment on the whole trip that behaved normally. If you want to see what else is on offer, there is a guide to the cruises on the rivers and canals of St Petersburg.

Cash: I bought my roubles from a Facebook group

For cash I decided to get creative. The Australian dollar was performing abysmally against the US dollar because of the conflict in Iran, and the thought of being hosed down by multiple currency exchanges was killing me.

In a flash of desperation, I begged the “Russians in Perth” Facebook group to let me join, and asked whether anybody had roubles they were willing to trade. Just like that, I cobbled together more than enough money to last through my entire week-long stay in Russia. The general principle — getting hold of roubles before you travel — is worth thinking about wherever you live, because it means you are not at the mercy of the exchange offices once you land. Just check the rules on declaring cash when you enter before you set off with a wad of notes.

The eSIM

I used an Ubigi eSIM. It had the best deal for me because I was also visiting the Baltics and Finland on the same trip. It was easy to buy and it installs seamlessly, with no QR code required. If you are still choosing, there is a comparison of the eSIMs that actually work in Russia and a guide to buying one before you go.

The T-Bank card I could not activate

I applied for a T-Bank card and arranged for a representative to deliver it to my hotel. I did not need it for this trip, but I plan to return to Russia and it will make future planning a lot easier.

The main hurdle was that I applied with my Australian number, which did not allow for roaming. So the bank sent me multiple messages updating me on progress and asking me to fix a concrete time to meet the representative, and I received none of them once I had arrived. Luckily I arranged for the concierge to call me when he turned up. He registered the card, but we could not activate it, because that required clicking a link in an SMS sent to the number I had registered with. And round and round we go. I was only able to activate it once I got home. If you are going to try this, read the step-by-step guide to getting a T-Bank card as a foreigner first.

Narva: I joined the queue at 11:15 and gambled

Because apparently life is not hard enough, I entered Russia through the Narva border crossing. I took a gamble and joined the queue at 11:15 in the morning, and it paid off: I was processed in under two hours. Try this at your own risk. The person behind me in the queue told me it had taken a lot longer the last time she used the crossing.

The Estonian side was the more stringent of the two — questions, scrutiny, and absolutely no euros allowed through. I only had €15 on me and I still had to change it at a kiosk nearby before they would let me cross. The Russian side was a breeze. They were even excited when I could not stop yapping about my cousin getting married there. Finally, a good start to things.

One thing worth adding: the Lux Express now drops passengers at the checkpoint itself and not at Narva Coach Station, which makes the whole thing much simpler if you are arriving by bus from Tallinn. My wait on 24 July was 1 hour 45 minutes, and the other people there who do the crossing regularly said it takes about three hours these days. We cannot take that as gospel, but it is a better guide than nothing — and you can also check the Telegram groups with real-time queue information the morning you travel.

A wedding in Mandrogi, on the Svir

The wedding was in Mandrogi, a quaint man-made village on the banks of the Svir river, halfway between St Petersburg and Kizhi. It is unashamedly a twee little tourist stopover, but it was perfect for holding all 18 of us in one place instead of trying to herd everyone around the vast city.

St Petersburg was… breath-taking

I splurged and got a hotel close to the Hermitage, which made all the points of interest walkable. That makes all the difference when you only have a few days in the city, and it is worth paying for. If you are weighing up areas, there is a guide to where to stay in St Petersburg.

Make sure you check for museum and church closures, because they are not open every day and it is very easy to lose an afternoon that way. The Hermitage and the other big museums each have their own closing day. And the long summer days were perfect for strolls throughout the city — in July it barely gets dark, which stretches an evening walk out for hours without you noticing. If you are still building your days, there are ready-made itineraries for one, two, three or four days in St Petersburg.

What I paid to get in

Here is what the entry tickets cost me, in case it helps you budget. Sorry, I did not check the prices for audio guides.

The two cathedrals are worth every rouble. Prices and opening hours change, so it is worth double-checking the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, St Isaac’s, or the rest of the city’s churches and cathedrals before you set out.

The colonnade is a separate ticket from the museum, and you pay the same ₽700 again — but you get this.

Peterhof by hydrofoil, and the bridges at night

I took the hydrofoil out to Peterhof, which is the way to do it: you go out across the gulf and arrive at the bottom of the gardens rather than at the back of a car park. The Lower Park and the Palace are separate tickets, so budget for both if you want to see the inside as well as the fountains.

And then there is the night boat, which takes you out onto the Neva to watch the drawbridges go up. It sounds like a tourist thing because it is a tourist thing, and it is still completely worth staying awake for.

Getting past the Resting Slavic Face

What surprised me the most was the friendliness of Russians. Once you get past the “Resting Slavic Face”, everyone was warm, patient, friendly and up for a chat, even when the chat consisted of the two of us yelling into a translator app.

Not to be political, but travelling as a woman of colour is not always smooth sailing. For their hospitality alone, Russians will always have a place in my heart. If that is something you are weighing up before you book, it is worth reading what the real safety situation is like for visitors rather than going on the general noise.

Download the offline maps before you go

This is the note I would put at the very top if I were writing this again: download the offline Yandex map and translator before you cross. Ubigi and Yesim would both drop out sporadically, and so would the VPNs — we all had different ones, and I used Paper VPN, which had a seven-day free trial. Curiously enough, Google Maps and the Play Store worked perfectly fine even when the VPN was down.

Have you travelled to Russia recently and want to share your experience? Tell me about your trip here and I will publish it in this section, with your name or anonymously, whichever you prefer. Chronicles like Mweru’s are the ones that really help the people who are still planning their trip.