My incoming mail has returned to nothingness as it’s been a couple of weeks since anything at all has arrived, the most recent of which was the postcard from China detailed below.  Several items of mail I’ve sent also seems to have gone astray; a long letter I sent my sister in Kansas two months ago has yet to arrive and two Postcrossing cards mailed 35 days ago are still “traveling” as is a letter I dispatched the same day as the cards.  That last one is even more distressing than the foreign-bound mail as its destination was an inmate at the Phuket Provincial Prison, just a short five-minute walk up the hill from my apartment.  Clearly, the problem lies with the Phuket post office.

Card #CN-1091972 is an official pre-paid card issued by the State Postal Bureau of China commemorating New Year 2007.  Hey!  I like old cards, too!  Shi-Feng added a couple of nice stamps to make up the rest of the international postage rate and mailed it from his home in Shan Dong Province on October 8th.  It took 19 days to travel 4,023 km (2,500 miles).  He wrote the following message:

Hello!

Very happy to know you through Postcrossing website.  Hope you’ll visit China one day, and I’ll ask you to Chinese dinner.  Keep on a touch.

Sincerely yours,
Zhang ShiFong

I do wonder how many Postcrossing correspondents actually meet in real life?  It’s nice to know that I have a Chinese dinner waiting for me if I ever get back to that country…

On 6 October, I sent out four of my self-designed ‘Greetings from Phuket’ postcards.  Card TH-148099 arrived in China on 29 October, having traveled 3,502 km (2,176 miles) in 23 days while TH-148100 spent 20 days journeying to a Belarus mailbox some 7,809 km (4,852 miles) from Phuket.

As I was preparing this article, a non-Postcrossing card arrived from my sister in Kansas, a beautiful postcard picturing the White House, U.S. Capitol Building, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, and Lincoln Memorial.

Marilyn had been in Washington, D.C., to run in the U.S. Marine Corps Marathon (so proud!) and wrote this note:

Had a fun day checking out the National Mall.  Went to WWII, Lincoln, Vietnam monuments and the American History Museum.  That was about all we could do so we save our “leg energy” for tomorrow’s marathon.  Hoping for great running weather tomorrow!  You would love all the history here!

Love,
Marilyn

She mailed the card upon her return to Kansas City on 30 October and it arrived at my guesthouse in Phuket the morning of 9 November.  Definitely a record-breaker!  (Appropriate for a distance-runner.)  It looks like Marilyn is almost as much of a history buff as her big brother…

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