Bidding Telegrams A Final Goodbye

[george]

Bidding telegrams a final goodbye

BANGKOK: -- Introduced by Samuel Morse in 1835, this traditional means of communication is finally being put to rest. Visit the Bang Rak post office today to pay your respects

It's 2008 but hundreds of people are turning up at the central post office - with their mobile phones and laptops in tow - to send telegrams.

It's the last week you can send a Thailand Post telegram. The 133-year-old service will end on Wednesday at the Bang Rak office.

Many people want a memento of the historic service.

At the post office there is a display that depicts the history of the telegraph in this country, and includes demonstrations and souvenirs.

"I've only heard about telegrams from my parents," says 19-year-old Penyada Waikid who came to the post office to see what was going on, and to send the first and only telegram of her life. "I wanted to see and know what a telegram really is."

A vast and varied history

Introduced by Samuel Morse in 1835, the telegraph came into Thailand in 1875. However, the service only came within the reach of the ordinary person in 1883.

Its heyday was between the 1980s and early 1990s - before the widespread use of telefaxes and mobile phones.

Telegraphy reached its peak in 1985, with 8.32 million telegrams sent each year. There were 987,984 telegrams sent in March 1995.

The numbers decreased and dropped to only a little more than 100 telegrams a day, most of which were debt-collection notifications. The average volume of 3,648 telegrams a month this year earns the post office just Bt130,000 - far from covering the annual Bt25 million in expenses.

Technology takes over

Despite communications technology, Postal Metropolis (South) director Sneh Paengsapa laments the loss of the service. "Cutting-edge technology may be fast, but it can easily generate errors."

But 75-year-old Bunchuay Pantawin knows the once-fast service must come to an end. A telegraph used to be his first choice of communication with clients for decades, until his last telegram 20 years ago. Then the cheaper and faster telefax became the first option. "Things change. Old technology is replaced by new inventions."

After 25 years working with the telegraph, post office telecommunications chief Kanissorn Tongsub accepts it will become history next week.

Apart from telegram mementoes, "the telegraph will always be in my memory".

At the GPO

>> Morse code demonstration daily at 12.30pm and 5.30pm until Wednesday. Telegraph seminar at 4pm on Wednesday.

>> Information and Communication Technology Minister and Thailand Post's four former directors-general send last telegram on Wednesday at 7pm.

>> Be a part of history by sending a telegram marked "the last telegraph" to be received at your address on May 2. Cost Bt30.

A telegram I will never forget

In my life of almost half a century, I can recall that I have on several occasions used the telegraph service as a means to send a message. That was in the days when mail was slow and landline telephones were rare and expensive. Mobile telephones were unthinkable.

The one telegram I will never forget is a message I sent to my parents in 1979. I had just graduated from high school and taken a university entrance examination.

I went to Sanam Luang to find out if I had passed the exam. The results were announced on signboards at Sanam Luang.

Oh, where was the Internet then?

I had to wade through thousands of people scrambling in front of dozens of signboards erected under the sunlight to try to find the result.

Much to my relief, I found I had won a place at the Faculty of Liberal Arts in Thammasat University.

The first thing in my mind was to tell my parents about the good news.

Our family in Udon Thani did not have a telephone then.

I went to a post office to send a telegram that read: "Got accepted into Thammasat University's Liberal Arts Faculty."

I did not think much about this particular telegram. Years later, whenever I went home to visit my late parents, they would always talk about the day they received my telegram to inform them that I was able to make it to one of the best universities in Thailand. It was one of the happiest days of their lives.

My mom stuffed the telegram in her pocket, held it tight in her hand for fear of losing it and had a nice evening walk with my dad around the beautiful reservoir of Nong Prachak.

-- Daily Xpress/The Nation 2008-04-25

[john b good]

In my home city (in the Antipodes) my high school friends would work after school delivering telegrams on bicycles around the central city.

A number took jobs with the P & T (Post & Telegraph) after leaving school and worked there through to retirement.

"those were the days eh? real cradle to the grave stuff"

[Scott]

I only remember my family getting a telegram once, when I was about 4 years old. It was from an uncle announcing the birth of a cousin. I clearly remember my mother reading it: "Mother and daughter doing fine. Father might make it!"

I am truly surprised that the telegraph has lasted this long. I wonder how the Morse Code (or whatever it was called here) worked with the Thai language. It's a little more complex than English.

[Johpa]

And yet a few of us dinosaurs on these boards remember the days when we had to trek to a city's Central Post office and wait in a long line to make an international telephone call.

[Scott]

I wonder who sent the last telegram and what it said?

Are there any places left on earth where they use the telegraph?