Teacher Trekker

History & Backstory of the Saigon Central Post Office

As mentioned in a previous posting, just next door to the Saigon Notre-Dame Cathedral (The Basilica of Our Lady of The Immaculate Conception) in an area that some refer to as Paris Square, is the Saigon Central Post Office. What I found interesting was the identity of the architect. The building was designed by Gustave Eiffel, yes, the Eiffel Tower Eiffel. It was constructed between 1886 and 1891, and the interior has a vaulted roof that looks similar in design to early European railway stations. (Too bad my ceiling photographs are blurry.) The building still functions as an active post office and is the largest in Vietnam. This is how I ended up going to the Saigon Central Post Office.

First Time at the Saigon Central Post Office

Like most tourists, while I was at the post office, I bought a few postcards from the souvenir stand in the middle of the lobby to send home to family and friends. I found somewhere to sit down and proceeded to write a few short messages. Afterwards I stood on line to purchase stamps. I turned them over to lick them and noticed that they did not have any glue on them. Following the example of a local, I walked over to a tacky sponge that had a glue solution on it. Oops, I applied too much glue, and one of my stamps ripped in half as I applied it to the postcard. Fortunately, the postal worker said it was not a problem and I kept my fingers crossed.

Post Article Update: I was in Thailand when I received messages online that my mail was delivered to friends and family back home.

Second Time at the Saigon Central Post Office

A few days later I had a much more interesting experience in the post office following my Cu Chi Tunnels tour. I purchased souvenirs during the tour from an arts warehouse whose craftspeople had genetic defects because of their parent’s exposure to Agent Orange during the war. They made handcrafted wooden artwork, household items and decorations. I purchased some gifts for family members and purchased something for myself. The sign in the store said they were able to pack and ship your purchases around the world. It turns out they just wrap up your purchases for easy shipping, but you had to go to the post office yourself to ship it. That’s not what I originally thought was the service provided, but I already paid. Fortunately, I was able to leave my package on the bus the remainder of the tour, while I was figuring out how to ship it back to America.

The following day I stopped at the post office to send the package home, especially because it was too large and heavy to carry for the rest of my trip. After looking around reading the signs for the different lines, I found the one I needed to stand on, and that’s when things went wrong. Apparently, the concept of lines in many places in Asia does not conceptually exist in the same way it does in the USA. I waited patiently for around ten minutes, but soon noticed that people were just walking past me and yelling at the postal worker for whatever forms they needed. Eventually, I realized there was no formal line, so I followed suit and was given a myriad of pages I needed to complete in triplicate.

After completing all the forms, I handed them to the postal worker, only to be told I filled them out incorrectly. Actually, I wrote the day and month backwards as Americans write month/day/year. When I went to cross out the numbers and swap them, the postal worker handed me another set of forms, and I filled out the forms a second time. After correctly filling out the forms, he opened up my sealed package (probably to search its contents for illegal contraband) only to reseal the package and apply the forms I just completed. As he did this the funniest thing happened. A person walked up to him, said something and motioned for the postal worker to pass him something. The worker handed him a piece of carbon paper that would have saved me a bunch of time as I wrote and rewrote label after label.

I was given back my package, now with all the proper labels, and was ushered to the shipping line. There I had a conversation, if you can call it that, with a female worker about how I should ship the package back. I chose to send the package by ground shipping (which really means by land and sea) since it was the cheaper option. Shipping the package home via air was also available, but it was almost four times the cost of the much slower ground option. Since I did not need the package within two weeks, I chose the cheaper three month slow boat back to America. The contents of the package were Christmas presents, and it arrived sometime in October.

I realized after the fact that I should have just shipped the package by air, but it was very early in my trip, and I was trying to conserve as many dollars as possible. I did purchase insurance on the package, but I kept my fingers crossed that it wouldn’t be necessary. Somehow an hour and a half later, I was finished in the post office, and walked away completely stressed out wondering what just happened. But mostly, I wondered if I would ever see this package arrive in America.

Post Article Update: Fortunately, the package arrived undamaged and earlier than scheduled. As a result everyone received their Christmas gifts without a hitch.