Mailing Packages in Cambodia

Part of the excitement of traveling in foreign lands is figuring out how to conduct the most basic of business -- the sort of every day activities we all take for granted in the US, where roads look like roads and postal employees may be slow, but generally don't steal your stuff or add random amounts to the weight of your packages.

I went on a mad shopping spree in the Russian Market in Phnom Penh last week. I spent entirely too much time sitting on a tiny stool in the back of a market stall madly negotiating over the price of silk bags and otherChristmas presents. In the end, poor Eric was left carrying a huge bag of goodies, and I was left wondering how to heck to get this stuff home. Carrying an extra bag of junk through rural Laos during the rainy season -- especially when we'll be traveling on questionable boats under gray skies -- wasn't high on my to-do list. So back to the guesthouse I went to look up what the guidebook said about shipping boxes out of Cambodia.

Ooops, apparently I should have waited until Bangkok to do my shopping. Shipping from Cambodia is questionable and expensive. But hey, by the time I figured this out, I was lugging around a sack of presents and watching the sky for rain. I'd worked hard to get my neices fancy puppets, and said puppets were not going to ride in my backpack for another three weeks. So on Friday morning before we set off on the bus to the beach, Maya, Phil, Eric and I went on a quest to ship our shopping finds home. We braved crowded streets blocked off for the king's motorcade and a tuk-tuk driver who wasn't quite sure where we were going and seemed quite content to drive us all over the city with no gas in his tank (perhaps explaining why he was going 5 mph the entire way).

Eventually we reached the DHL office, which looked a lot like any other DHL office, but contained crazy women who didn't seem to understand why we were annoyed when they wanted to charge us for 5 kilos of weight when our package weighed 2 1/2 kilos. They told Maya that it was for "packaging," but that didn't make a lick of sense. And then the gigglingDHL ladies told us it would be cheaper if we had more weight. Maya and I took them up on the offer and threw everything we had ever contemplated shipping onto the scale. Not surprisingly, the women were insane, and the shipping cost went from $100 to $250. We decided that spending $250 to ship $100 of junk to the US wasn't a very prudent idea...so back to the tuk-tuk we went (annoyed husbands in tow).

That's when the real third-world shipping experience began. We drove to the post office, where we were sent from counter to counter then outside and around the corner-- then from counter to counter in the other part of the PO. Finally, I located the surface shipping counter and asked to purchase a box (as the Lonely Planet had assured me I could). The woman behind the counter told me that any box would cost $1, which I said was fine. She wandered to the back of the office and returned with a banana box -- I kid you now. It was a fruit box with no top and large holes throughout the sides. The bottom was soggy, and as if all of this wasn't enough, the box wasn't large enough to hold Maya's and my stuff. I tried to talk the woman out of another box, but she said that this box was my only option -- there were no other boxes at the post office.

By this point, Phil and Eric were hiding in a corner, and Maya was about to lose it. I told them to wait and wandered to the other end of the counter -- the air mail area. There I spotted a somewhat sad, but perfectly useful box. I pointed at it, and asked the ladies if I could have it. They were confused. I do believe it was their trashcan. They started to take the papers out of it, stopped, and walked away from me. I wasn't aboutto give up, so I followed them, pointed at the box, and asked again. Eventually two confused postal workers handed it over.

I returned to the other counter where the bananabox lady looked annoyed and confused. Boxes apparently are not supposed to appear when she's working on making a box sale!

I started shoving our belongings into the new,slightly soggy box...but then a random male worker appeared and demanded to look at what we were shipping.

Maya had purchased some soap for her aunt from a ritzy hotel in Siem Reap. Unfortunately, ritzy hotels do not put labels on their handmade soap, and this soap came in two-inch balls. Yep, nothing like balls of white soap wrapped in celophane to arouse suspicions at the PO. Maya and I tried to explain that the balls were soap -- I even did a demonstration of washing myself with one -- but that wasn't about to work. I finally convinced Maya to pocket the soap and ship everything else. I doubt US customs would have liked our soap either.

Then the PO employee noticed that Maya was trying to ship a little Buddha sculpture. He took the sculpture to a back room and had a large group of people examine it. He eventually returned with it and asked where we got it. Before Maya could say anything, I told him we bought it at the Russian Market for $5. Okay, so it was $20, but there is no way he could think it was some kind of relic if I only paid $5...so $5 it was for the purposes of that discussion. He frowned then put it in our box.

The woman handed over some tape -- reading ""Small Cambodia Package." I cut the box down to size and taped the hell out of it, praying the entire time that the semi-soggy cardboard would somehow hold up enough to get my stuff back to the States.

We were almost home free!

The woman took the package to the back room to weight it. She returned and told us it weighed 10 kilos. Maya started to throw a fit because we knew it couldn't weight more than 7.5. I grabed her by the arm and pointed out that the difference in shipping cost was $5 and that we should eat that if we ever hoped to see her Buddha again.

I paid for our 10 kilos, and our little soggy box headed off into the world of Cambodia surface shipping. It's supposed to arrive in Lansdowne in 2-3 months. I give it 70-30 odds, and I do believe I'm being generous. Anyone care to start a package pool?