Where is Cambodia?
By Graham Shaw
Where is Cambodia? You would expect this question to be easy to answer. Having lived for more than 17 years in Cambodia, it seems that some postal authorities, or certain staff working in sorting offices, are unable to locate Cambodia. Or perhaps postal items heading for Cambodia have a peculiar tendency to end up elsewhere in the world due to having ‘fallen between the cracks’ in the ever-more streamlined and mechanized sorting offices of the world.
And here is the evidence, in alphabetical order of the countries to which items heading to Cambodia have been missent.
Albania
Figure 1, above, showing at the top, right, the arrival postmark for Phnom Penh, and in the centre, a rectangular postmark which states, ‘Mbrritje’, which means ‘Arrival’ in Albanian.
Figure 2, above, shows a computer-enhanced close-up of the Albanian arrival postmark for 25 December 2006.
I guess you could argue that ‘C’ for Cambodia is not far from ‘A’ for Albania in the English alphabet!
Colombia
Well, both countries begin with ‘C’, so perhaps we can understand how this could happen if someone in a sorting office is not paying attention! The first example comes from a credit card bill sent from the UK to Cambodia.
Figure 3, above: the Air Mail item from the UK to Cambodia with a partial rectangular stamp added in Colombia.
Figure 4, above, shows a close up of the Colombian postmark; ‘mal dirigido’ means misdirected in English.
The second example shows the packaging from a parcel sent by my parents to my daughter to celebrate a birthday; she was not happy when it took around 3 months for the parcel to cross the world from England to Colombia to Cambodia!
Figure 5: the Colombian post office kindly secured the parcel with the tape shown above.
Figure 6, above, shows a close-up of the tape with the top and bottom text in red translating as, ‘the mailing verifies the state of this seal’; the blue text in the centre translates as, ‘National Postal Service, Post Office of Colombia’.
Malaysia
Here is an example of an item sent from Wales to Cambodia but was missent to Malaysia.
Figure 7, above, shows the rectangular postmark added in Malaysia.
Figure 8, above, shows a close-up of the ‘Missent to Malaysia’ postmark.
Papua New Guinea
We go a bit further off the beaten track with our next example in which a letter sent from East Anglia in England to Phnom Penh is misspent to Boroko in Papua New Guinea! For those not familiar with ‘PNG’, as it is often referred to, Boroko is a district of Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. If you go to the website of ‘PNG Post’ (http://www.postpng.com.pg), you can see a photo of Boroko Post Office.
Figure 9: The address on this envelope, above, from the UK clearly shows the destination as Cambodia.
Figure 10: a close-up of the rectangular postmark from Boroko, Papua New Guinea, above.
Thailand
Well, Thailand is a neighbour of Cambodia, so this postal item did get close to its destination!
Figure 11: Another credit card bill, above, that stopped-off on its way to Cambodia.
Figure 12: a close-up of the ‘Missent to Bangkok, Thailand’ postmark, above.
Timor Leste (East Timor)
Would anybody like to guess how an item destined for Cambodia ended up in Dili, the capital of Timor Leste, also known as East Timor?
Figure 13: a double-lined postmark added to this envelope from Jersey, in the Channel Islands, to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that went via East Timor
Figure 14: a close-up of the ‘Missent to Dili’ postmark, above.
Figure 15: the rear of the envelope showing the arrival postmark for Dili (below) and for Phnom Penh (above).
Figure 16: A computer-enhanced close-up, above, of the arrival postmarks for East Timor and Phnom Penh.
Figure 17: Above, a map outlining the routes of various postal items missent en-route to Cambodia.
It is important, however, to note that all of the above postal authorities did make the effort to forward the postal item to Cambodia rather than simply throwing them away. There are other items, however, that over the past decade or more have never arrived, perhaps lost in the Bermuda Triangle!