I love snail mail; always have. I love sending personal notes to family & friends to say anything from thank you, happy birthday, thinking of you, or something totally nonsense. No matter the occasion I love the feeling of sending a little love & thoughtfulness to someone else and it popping up in their mailbox when they least expect it. Nowadays so much of our postal mail is unappealing - bills, junk, catalogs. So to be able to send a bit of unexpected joy to those I care about is a no-brainer.
Naturally, a trip like ours is as perfect an opportunity as I can think of, to send love to family & friends afar in the form of postcards! I made it my personal mission to send postcards from every country we visited. Sadly, I somehow missed one country . . . India. I'm not surprised I forgot while we were in Pune; we were having too much fun pretending behaving as though we were locals with our Indian friends. But somehow amidst the chaotic hum of our very short time in Delhi - and our whirlwind visit to the Taj Mahal - I completely spaced on finding & sending postcards. On the off chance I'm remembering incorrectly and anyone reading this received a postcard from us from India, let me know!
No surprise, I took the lead on all things related to postcards. I sought them out while we were out & about, made a point of getting us to a post office for stamps and ensured they ultimately found their way into a local post box, bound for their addressee in a matter of days/weeks/months/(ever?!). Here's a bit more intel on how that all went down on the road . . .
#1 Hand Writing
Writing the postcards was inevitably largely my responsibility. But it never felt like a chore or responsibility. I can think of nothing more pleasurable than sitting down, relaxing (with a cup of coffee or glass of wine) and jotting words to people I care about. In my mind, it was a big act of gratitude; my way of showing gratitude for being able to travel and experience new things/places/people, share even a small piece of that experience, and bring a smile to someone I care about. Win, win!
Postcard writing in action/settings. From top left: Queenstown, New Zealand (Mar 2020); Curringa Farm, Tasmania, Australia (Feb 2020); Langkawi island, Malaysia (Jan 2020); Sukhothai, Thailand (Dec 2019); Old City, Jerusalem, Israel (Oct 2019); Cairo, Egypt (Oct 2019); Athens, Greece (Oct 2019); Brac island, Croatia (Oct 2019); Vicenza, Italy (Sept 2019)
I'd sometimes engage the girls & Doug to help on the postcard writing front. Often it was as simple as me writing the message, and then having everyone individually sign their name at the bottom (as opposed to me writing all our names on their behalf). That would inevitably turn into not just a signature, but a decorated/fancy signature + little drawing + little message of hello/miss you/love you from the girls. Doug would even sometimes bust out one of his signature drawings (the elephant or curly-haired dude). Having everyone contribute in this small way made the postcards feel far more personal. Other times I'd have the girls write the whole message themselves (to a friend or grandparent, in particular). Doug was even known to write a rogue postcard himself.
Intense P&S concentration while writing postcards. From left to right: Paro, Bhutan (Nov 2019); Postira, Brac island, Croatia (Oct 2019); Bol, Brac island, Croatia (Oct 2019)
#2 Stamps: On a Mission
Finding stamps for our postcards was often harder than you might think! If I was lucky, international stamps were sold alongside the postcards in the kiosk/roadside stand/shop. I'd say this happened about 40% of the time. The balance of times it was up to us to source stamps on our own. This involved me searching for local post offices on Google Maps and detouring us to one during our daily excursions, or me peeling off on my own for a short stint to pick them up.
Here's a sampling of the more memorable international stamp searches that spring to mind:
Jerusalem, Israel: By the time we were able to get stamps in Jerusalem's walled Old City, I had taken us by no less than three post offices. Every time we'd pop into a local post office, the line would be insanely long. Their system was something like the DMV or your local grocery deli counter; you went up to a computer screen, punched in the category of service(s) you were after, and out spit a ticket with a number on it. Screens hung above the service windows, displaying the queue of ticket numbers they were currently attending to. An automated voice would ping out loudly each number when it was your turn. In the first three post offices we tried over our 72 hours in Jerusalem, it was clear from the screens that we'd be queuing for quite some time, so we had to abandon each time.
Our forth - and successful - attempt coincided with an unnerving event in the Old City. More on that in this blog post, but the gist is that there was a stabbing in Old City, Jerusalem just moments before, and the suspect was still on the loose. There was heightened police/military activity and we saw the policy ultimately drag the suspect's accomplice out, just 20 feet in front of us at the post office (followed shortly by an ambulance carrying the injured primary suspect). Suffice it to say, tensions were definitely high; it was the first time in our travels where I felt nervous on the safety front.
While this scene was unfolding outside, I stayed put inside the post office with the girls (Doug went out front to take it in from a safe distance). We needed to wait it all out, so what better time to put ourselves in the post office queue for stamps. About 20 minutes later our number was called (exciting!) and we walked away with all the stamps we needed. Memorable in more ways than one.
Chiang Rai, Thailand: This particular post office mission in the Northern part of Thailand was memorable for different, more pleasant reasons. This time Sadie and I decided to have "Sadie/Mommy time" and venture a few blocks over to the Thai post office on our own. Meanwhile, Doug & Paige had "Paigey/Daddy time" and wandered around the area on their own. Even just walking a few blocks together made for fun 1:1 time with Sadie; we were on a mission, and we were going to find those stamps! It was a bit challenging to communicate with the Thai workers, but thankfully I had some postcards with me and was able to gesture to get my point across. Success! And a lovely adventure/quality time with my Sadieboo.
Ellendale, Tasmania, Australia: Ellendale is an itty bitty village of ~240 people, about an hour Northeast of Hobart on the Australian island of Tasmania. The Ellendale post office doubles as a general store. It was a charming one room building from the late 1880s, where you could buy an eclectic mix of items like stamps, homemade cribbage boards, Kleenex and biscuits :) Felt like we had stepped back in time.
#3 Send Away
Now to the final step . . . getting the written, stamped & addressed postcards into the hands of the local postal system! Again, sounds easy, right? But you'd be surprised what a scramble it was at times to get this all done before moving out of a country (onto the next) and invalidating the stamps! Sometimes we'd mail them back at local post office branches; other times we'd make a game of it . . . see who can spot the postal mailbox first! In the end, all postcards written were stamped and mailed in-country!
Mailing postcards, from top left: Hoi An, Vietnam (Dec 2019); Dead Sea, Jordan (Nov 2019); Athens, Greece (Oct 2019); Bol, Brac island, Croatia (Oct 2019); Amelia, Italy (Sept 2019); Graz, Austria (Aug 2019); Lisbon, Portugal (Aug 2019); Montreal, Canada (Aug 2019)
Special delivery! Mailing letters to Santa in Chiang Rai, Thailand (Dec 2019):
One particularly memorable mail station was in Bagno di Romagna, Italy. We stopped off in this charming village to see their "Il Sentiero degli Gnomi" (Path of the Gnomes) park. More on this darling Italian gnome village here. At the end we were able to write a special message to the gnomes and put it in the gnome mail station delivery slot. No stamps or post office/mailbox search necessary :) (Sept 2019)
Did They Arrive?
Whether all the postcards made it to their end destinations/recipients is a mystery! I'll never really know for certain. What I do know is that in many instances they took MONTHS to arrive to our family/friends. Some of my all-time favorite postcards we sent from the road were from Bhutan. Not because it was Bhutan (although that is certainly part of it), but because of the Bhutanese stamps. Unbeknownst to us, it's a "thing" in Bhutan to have stamps custom made. Our amazing guide, Jamyang, gave us a gift our last day of a stamp that featured a picture of our family during our time in Bhutan! How amazing is that?! Incredibly thoughtful. So I was particularly anxious to hear back from folks on those postcards. Even with a hand-written call-out to look at the stamp, most people never even noticed. Doh!
In other Bhutan postcard-related news, check out this post: retrieving postcards left for days at a cafe in Bhutan.
Postcard Wish List
In retrospect, there are two things I really wish I had done as it relates to my postcard sending:
I desperately wish I had sent one postcard from each country, addressed to us/our future selves (physically sent to a family member that would kindly hold onto them for us until our return). Idea being that we'd have a stack of gorgeous postcards - one from each meaningful destination in our travels - that we'd be able to cherish for always. I can't imagine any more exciting or special keepsake! I know something as relatively trivial as not sending ourselves a pack of postcards might seem like no biggie, but it's definitely something I wish I'd done. Not sure how that idea escaped me at the time.
I also wish I'd kept detailed track of who I sent postcards to, per country. I generally kept track of who we sent postcards to overall, but I wish I had a spreadsheet of precisely who I sent postcards to, for each individual country. I'd be so curious to know what portion of those postcards actually made it to their end recipients!
Hunkered down in NZ as we currently are, there's no more postcard writing at the moment. The last ones I sent I think were from Milford Sound back in mid-March (below).
I wonder when I'll be back in a travel postcard groove, and from where they'll be sent . . . Fingers crossed there's a whole batch of postcards to send to family & friends in my future!
Kommentare