Post Office Box in CR?

[Manassas]

Local mail seems to arrive by post to the house. But I'm not sure how reliable it might be, in particular for international mail. Does anybody know if Post Office Boxes are available in town? And are they more reliable in getting mail?

Have not seen this discussed before.

[RichCor]

According to the "Internet",

...many Chiang Rai local Amphoe Post Offices provide postal boxes (mentions in 2010 wrote they were available for around 300 THB/year), and the main Chiang Rai main Post Office may have them for 500 THB/Year. I say 'may' as I seem to remember a post saying they had a waiting list.

Requires you present your Passport, and some are said you can open one presenting your Thai driver's license.

Other "Internet" suggestions, if a PO Box was not available or inconvenient was to "make a deal with a local hotel to receive and hold your mail".

Central Chiang Rai Post Office

99/3 Moo 3, Central Chiang Rai,

Tambon Wiang, Amphoe Mueang Chiang Rai, Chiang Rai, 57000

Thailand

For the locations Chiang Rai Province Post Offices or Service Centers, take a look at this Google map for Chiang Rai Post Office

[sceadugenga]

I live out of town and haven't had a lot of problems with mail delivery, the only incident I can recall in 10 years is an ebay purchase from China never turned up but the company immediately sent a replacement when I inquired so the problem may have been at their end.

[villagefarang]

We have never had any problems with home delivery. It is usually the same guy and he knows everybody in his area. Sometimes he will even give us our mail while walking the dogs.

[Paul888]

I am quite impressed with the mail service and I imagine it would be even more efficient if the house numbering system was more logical.

[villagefarang]

Next house to be built gets the next number, regardless of where it is located in the village. What could be more logical than that.

[Rotweiler]

I wish that were true, VF... The numbers here are "pick your own as long as its not already used". Makes for interesting times for the post - forunately they seem rather used to it and really don't go by house numbers.

That said, mail service is excellent - WAY BETTER than should be expected especially considering how many of us are in the boonies.

[villagefarang]

It sounds like our village is less imaginative than I thought. We weren’t given the option of picking a number out of the air which would have been interesting. We were told what the next number was with no options. The next house after us was a few sois over.

Mail service here reminds me of my grandmothers town where the phone operator always knew where to find the person you were trying to reach. Everyone had crank phones which went through the operator. Here the mailman is the one who knows everyone.

[RichCor]

<...>

Mail service here reminds me of my grandmothers town where the phone operator always knew where to find the person you were trying to reach. Everyone had crank phones which went through the operator. Here the mailman is the one who knows everyone.

..always wondered who was responsible for creating the crank call. I think I've found him.

[villagefarang]

<...>

Mail service here reminds me of my grandmothers town where the phone operator always knew where to find the person you were trying to reach. Everyone had crank phones which went through the operator. Here the mailman is the one who knows everyone.

..always wondered who was responsible for creating the crank call. I think I've found him.

That is clever and I like it but knowing how things work in Chiang Rai, someone will add that on to a long list of make-believe grievances against VF. “You know what VF did now, he created the crank call. Yeah, I know that guy is unbelievable.” So for those too young to have ever used one, here is an image of the phone.

[sceadugenga]

I've seen those in movies but cant recall one in real life.

Back in my day, the 50s, very few people in our small town had a private phone, in a town of five or six hundred people the only people with a phone in the house were businessmen or management at the local sawmill.

We had one phonebox at the local store, in the evening European migrants would line up to ring relatives, a complex and expensive process.

There's still a few of these boxes around but the old phones in them are long gone, they had buttons for various functions (marked A and B ).

Edited October 5, 2015 by sceadugenga

[villagefarang]

Visiting my mother’s parent when I was a child was like stepping back in time. Wooden outhouse, chamber pots inside and no running water in the house, just a hand pump in the front yard. My grandfather owned the general store where old farmers sat around a cast-iron potbelly stove chewing tobacco and aiming for the spittoon. Not sure what they did about mail.