Our first year here, I was a little excited to send Christmas gifts home from Myanmar. I thought of all the exotic things I had seen on the streets and the markets and how fun it would be to send those items to loved ones back home in the U.S. and Latvia.
I carefully picked out things I thought my family would like and packaged them up for shipment. I took them to the local post office.
And this is where it gets weird.
I told them I wanted to send them to the United States and Latvia. After looking through a few books they took me in the back and told me Latvia wasn't a real place. I took out Google Maps and showed them that it was in fact a real place. They disagreed. Clearly I had used some computer magic to conjure up this made up fantasy land and was trying to trick them. Then they opened all my packages and went through them. I kept trying to convince them that it was real, I used to live there, and my family lives there. I told them to Google it themselves. Then they started to laugh at me. Obviously I was trying to trick them. I wanted to waste me money sending a make believe package to the made up place. Once I got angry and told them it was not funny, that these were gifts for my family for Christmas, they stopped laughing directly at me. Made a few calls, but insisted it was not a real place. I asked if I could just send the U.S. packages then. The answer was "NO". Obviously I was crazy and they didn't want to bother with me anymore. They did believe the United States was real. They sent me packing with all my gifts and no way to deliver them.
After licking my wounds, the easiest solution was to take the packages to Thailand and send them from there.
We were planning a visa run right after Christmas. (Visa runs, next topic!) I could send them from Thailand easy peasy. They would be late, but at least I could send them. Sure enough, there was a post office near the Myanmar embassy and we sent our packages. No one even blinked at us.
Now it's May. Mother's day and my MIL birthday are approaching. She lives in Missouri, so I decide to venture to a different post office and try again.
It was a bit more organized, but still
a little confusing. All signs are in Burmese, but I was lucky to find a woman that spoke English and helped me out. First you buy a box from one counter and fill out a form, he goes through your things. Then you go to another counter where they go through all your things again. They weigh it and then to a third counter where they tell you the price. I never saw anyone actually seal the box, I really hope all the contents make it. It was so expensive! $50 for a very small box with a few candies and Myanmar dried foods. I've learned my lesson. Just take it and mail it from Thailand.
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