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Sending Parcels Home While Traveling You may find the need to send packages home while traveling. This need may arise if you decide to purchase a large, valuable, or fragile good (I purchased a sitar in India), or perhaps you no longer need some items which you have been lugging around in your bag.
The first step is to visit a post office wherever you currently are. A post office employee will explain the options you have and the requirements you must follow to ship an item outside their country. If no one working at the post office speaks a common language with you, they will usually have a pamphlet in English outlining the requirements.
Among other things they point out, be sure to determine:
- Packaging requirements (wooden crates, boxes, etc.) for your locale. - Who needs to do the packing concerned. Some places require that international parcels need to be packed by a third party who is sanctioned by the post office. - Rates for ground, sea, and air transport, as well as rates for shipping with a tracking number and without. - Estimated transit and delivery times for those same shipping methods. - Any customs requirements or duties for shipping out of the country concerned. This will be based on the type and value of the goods you are looking to ship.
In my experience, the cost of shipping by ground or sea is far less than the cost of shipping by air. And the cost of shipping by air with a tracking number is not much more than the cost of shipping by air without one. I have also found that the transit and delivery times for sea or ground shipping are almost always overstated by local post offices. The staff at a given post office often will quote three to four months as the estimated delivery window for sea or ground shipments; in reality, I have found them to be far less than that. They will also point out that sea and ground shipments do not usually have a tracking number, so there is no guarantee that they will not be lost. To that I say, there is also no guarantee that a package will not be lost with a tracking number.
Air delivery will usually take less than a week to arrive at its destination no matter where you ship from in the world. And, of course, delivery, no matter what the post office staff may tell you otherwise, means arrival at the customs service in the destination country, not the final destination for the package. Customs delays upon entry can add days or even weeks to the final delivery time for a shipment. Such delays will depend on what is being shipped, its value, and the clarity of the descriptions used in the accompanying paperwork.
If the customs service of the receiving country imposes a duty on the shipment, that duty must be paid in the country concerned. As far as I know, there is no way to pay such duties up front, because they haven’t as yet been assessed. |
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Yours Truly at The Temples of Angkor, Cambodia
© Stephen Braun |
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