First you’ll have to find the post office for your area: This might take you weeks since people tell you one direction to look and you arrive to only find the postmaster tell you to go somewhere else saying, “Oh… you live there. This is not your post office. You need to go over there.” When you eventually find the post office for your little area (more like a village), it might be tucked away behind some houses and look like a mud building built in the 1800’s with cows on the sidewalk.
Then you’ll have to figure out which post office you can actually send mail from. ail an item out of. Not all post offices provide services for mailing things out. Many only collect and deliver mail. Your neighborhood 1800’s post office is one of these.
You will talk to the nice old postman who will offer you some tea and he will tell you, you need to drive to another office to mail something out.
Once you finally go to an office that mails items out, you’ll have to see if they have time to help you: You might show up at the counter and no one even looks up. When you try to ask a question in the language you are still trying to learn, they might just ignore you.
While you figure out what you should do, you will realize you need to seal the package you brought: Many post-offices have no supplies such as tape, sharpies, or envelopes for mailing packages out.
You will decide to go to the medical shop next door to buy some medial tape in order to close your package.
After you tape up your package, you will realize that the ladies behind the counter are ignoring your next question of how much it costs.
You will decide to drive to another post office in order to get some help.
You will walk up to the counter, hand them your medical taped package, and ask how much it costs.
After the postman weighs it, he will tell you what it costs and to go to another counter to purchase 5 stamps.
Once you purchase the stamps, you will realize they don’t have anything sticky on the back. You will look around to see if someone can tell you what you should do about it.
Someone will motion for you to go to a 3rd counter to dump some sort of glue substance on your stamps and rub your finger all over it so the stamps stick on the package.
Next you will go the the original counter and wait in a Mob. A Mob is a tightly packed group of people who know who’s turn is next because they remember who arrived in the mob first but cutting others is always fair game.
Someone will try to cut you in line so you lean over the counter, block the person from inching any closer, and stick the package right in front of the face of the postman behind the counter.
Next, the postman will say “okay” and tell the previous customer to show you the next place you are supposed to go to.
You will follow the stranger out the door.
He will point to an area where you should drop your package off.
You will then hand the package to a man behind a desk and he will look at it, ask someone else where the glue is (since you must have not done a very good job).
Once the postman finds a bottle of glue, he will dump more glue on the stamps, turn your package face down, and smash it on his desk. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if you had something fragile in your package. This smashing is to make sure the stamps adhere to the package.
You will stand there not sure what you are supposed to do next and then realize you have finally accomplished mailing your first package in South Asia.
