As many of you know I have pen pals all over, though not as many as I used to.
This morning I received a parcel, but, it was one I’d already sent, around this time last year to my pen pal in South Africa. She never received it, as I now have it back. It has taken a year to get back to me. Post has been difficult between her & I due to Covid, & she has never told me if she’d received this parcel & she obviously hadn’t. Guess I was lucky it has been returned to me the sender.
To anyone who sends parcels abroad, clearly put your own name & address on the back that way this will get the parcel back to you if it gets undelivered.
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Doesn’t everybody anyway?
I hope they do, but in case…
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Wow, that was real slow - even for a return trip! But it was a cheap return trip, I guess!
Did it say why it was returned??
The label said uncollected. Cost me £7.30 to send it.
Some years ago a friend sent a package to me from Malaysia.to my PO box. I didn’t know it was arriving, anyway it didn’t fit the PO Box but they didn’t put a card in the box to tell me to collect it.
After a month they returned it to sender as not collected. When I found out I wrote to the PO complaining, it hasn’t happened since and they have a new system of temporary larger boxes and leave the key in the box.
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South African post is dreadful & I guess Covid hasn’t helped, not had a letter from my pal for months either. Last one said they were in lock down again.
After reading what Bruce posted, it sure makes you wonder if something similar happened with your penpal.
Sad.
The parcel I sent would fit in a letter box, the post person who posted it back to me put it through the letter box. It was a scarf. Pal lives in a retirement complex & the home gets the letters etc & posts them to the flats in the group. I don’t think the SA PO bothered to even deliver the parcel, or it got overlooked, for months probably & they just sent it back to me. At least I did get it back I guess.
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When I was young, R Mar used to send parcels to her friend who was a missionary in then Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.
On one occasion she sent a woman’s magazine, possibly a Woman’s Own, rolled up inside a cardboard tube. Mum also included a few items that were hard to find in country. The authorities in Ceylon thought this was a suspicious package and ordered my mum’s friend to come and open it.
When she did, she was embarrassed to unravel several metres of bog roll from each end of the cardboard tube, and a brace of Mars bars stuffed up the middle, all to retrieve a single woman’s magazine.
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Did the authorities in Ceylon let her keep the bog roll & the Mars bars? 
I received a Christmas card from my S.A. pal yesterday, I couldn’t read the post mark, but it was probably last years as I didn’t get one then.
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try sending a birthday card to Brazil Sue tried with in included within small a parcel. The brazilian post wanted £95 to deliver it. this is on top of paying for postage for the parcel already which contained I think a couple of childrens books.
Postage all over the World is extortion now. I sent my pal in SA a letter, that cost me £1.70, it was only a sheet of airmail paper & an airmail envelope, weighed practically nothing.
Whether she’ll get it is anyones guess. I have no idea how she is or what she’s managing to do there.
Parcels are even dearer, stopped sending to America now, the last I sent, a 2022 calendar to my pal there, cost me £8, not even a big calendar.
Speaking of SA - has anyone seen Minx recently?
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Minx is busy working on a work project…she’ll be back when its done 
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Thank you, Pixie!
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