Fit to be Thai'd

With everything being extremely cheap here, we thought the postal system would be cheap too. That turned out to be a mistake. We had bought a bunch of stuff at the night market, and thought we could save space and just send it home. After all, how much could it really cost? Thousands of baht, it turns out.

After we loaded our big box and heaved it onto the scale, we sat back with a smile, confident that the airmail price couldn't be much more than the cost of the tuk-tuk ride to the post office. And then the postmaster, who, by the way, was a very stern individual who took his job extremely seriously, delivered his decree from on high (or from the post office counter, as it was). "Thou shalt pay a price equivalent to the cost of two months worth of meals." And that was for "economy", which will get it there in a month. A month! At this point I began to suspect that Mr. Postmaster was taking a cut off the top. Paying 40 baht for a 20 baht tuk-tuk ride is annoying, but when prices in the thousands get inflated, well that just pisses you off.

As a post-script to this little adventure, once our money was safely esconced in Mr. Postmaster's drawer/pocket, he handed us a sign in English informing us that he collected stamps and asking us if we'd be willing to send the stamps back to him. When we agreed, he lost the tough-guy act, became all smiles, and handed us a self-addressed envelope and shook our hands. First he took our money, then he talked us into doing him a favor, too. I hope you and your family eat well tonight, Mr. Postmaster. This one's on us.