Involuntary sightseeing of Bangkok’s post offices

I’ve now spent the best part of my last TWO Saturdays on a goose chase, and it still ain’t over.

My mother sent me a package via registered post from Australia. It normally takes a week or two for a letter to arrive here, however after the third week with no sign of a package, it was time to chase things up here in Thailand. Armed with only the Registered Post number of the package from Australia, our journey began.

Wednesday 28th Oct:

• Call the reception of our condo, asking if they’ve received any delivery slips for my package. We are advised no.
• Call the closest post office to our condo in Phra Khanong. They advise they don’t have our package, but as we live on the other side of the khlong from the Phra Khanong post office, our package would have been sent to Bang Na Post Office.
• Call Bang Na Post Office, who advise us they received the package, and sent the delivery slip to our condo.
  Call our condo with this new information. They now remember they did get this slip, but because the address was not complete (it contained the name of the condo, but not the room number), they immediately returned it to the post office. useless…
• Call Bang Na Post Office with this detail, and after some searching they’ve found the paper. Advise us to come on down and pick it up. Fine, the traffic to Bang Na sucks, so we’ll go on the weekend to get it. But at least you’ve got it.

Saturday 31st October

• Go to Bang Na Post office with passport ID and Registered mail number to pick up package. Office attendant asks for delivery slip. We don’t have it – it was never delivered. But this guy said you have it. Office attendant looks for slip and package.
• Office attendant returns, and asks again if we have the slip. No, it hasn’t appeared in our bag over the last 10 minutes. Office attendant tries to call post office staff member who claims to have found the slip, but he’s left for the south for the weekend, and has his phone turned off.
• Office staff searches for another 30 minutes, but can’t find anything. Apologizes to us, and asks us to come again once this staff member is back. I got up early on a Saturday for this???

Wednesday 4th November

• Call Bang Na post office, and staff member is back at work. He confirms they have the slip, however as the slip was returned to them by the condo, the package has been sent to the head post office in Laksi. Advises that we’ll need to come to Bang Na to get the slip, then Laksi with the slip to get the package. You’ve gotta be kidding me…

Saturday 7th November

• Go to Bang Na post office. All staff members are there, and we pick up the slip no problems. Copy of slip made for us to take. Copy costs 2 baht. Bargain… At least we have the slip…
• Taxi to Laksi post office (which feels like an army campus). Security allows us in with the slip, and takes us to the mail processing room. Staff member takes delivery slip and looks up package in the system. Advises us that the package is at Hua Lamphong Post office customs centre. As the package slip was returned by the conto to the post office, we must first go to the police station to have a form completed to confirm the slip was returned wrongfully. WHAT!?!
• Floor manager hears our story, and is compassionate and helpful (as much as he can be when someone else has told us to drive to the other side of a city for a package that is actually on the other side of the city.) He completes a form which means we don’t need to go to the police station.

So now, we’ve gotta go to Hua Lamphong on a working day to go to the customs department. It’s a government department, so only open on the weekdays. Here’s a simple map of things with approximate one way distances. Thus far we’ve almost covered 80km from the various round trips. Nice miles!

View Larger Map

Having never been into a sorting room of a post office before (it was never high on my wish list), it is actually kinda interesting to see who does it and how it’s done. It hasn’t inspired me to apply for a job in a mail sorting room (the Bang Na post office is set in the 1950’s!!), but hey, just gives some insight, that’s all. I would have liked to takes some photo’s, but I didn’t think taking a photo of a workplace and postal sorting service would go down well.

Things I noticed are:

• All behind the scenes staff at the post office are blokes. ALL of them.
• It’s surprisingly easy to wander into a mail sorting room of the Bang Na post office.
• Sorting facilities are done completely by hand, and rely on people throwing the mail into different bags according to the address. In truth I don’t know what I’d expect if it wasn’t done by hand, but still, seems very basic and makes me wonder how the packages we sent can make it there (and in my experiences, they do).
• Most staff members we dealt with were happy to help. (sometimes a little slowly).
• Laksi post office uses sorting boxes labelled “Property of the United States Post Office”. Yep, all the big scandals break here.