Taipei Postbox

When I travel to other cities, I tend to collect little tidbits of information about their postal related matters. I guess it is a habit for many stamp collectors. Thus earlier I posted about the 'Nostalgic Looking Postbox in China' when I visited ShangHai.

Here's another postbox and this postbox is in Taipei. They have two different colours for postboxes - one for domestic mail and another for international mail. The Green Postbox is for Taiwan mails, and there is further differentiation - Taipei / Shilin area vs rest of Taiwan. Similarly for the Red postbox meant for international mail - Airmail vs Prompt Delivery. No I don't really understand what is meant by Prompt Delivery. The Chinese words at the prompt delivery is "限时邮件", so if there is any Taiwanese reading this post, I'll greatly appreciate your enlightenment on this category of mail.

Singapore's postboxes are more 'colourful' compared to those in Taiwan or China. Well, to prove my point, here's a picture from the Kovan Postbox, near the Kovan MRT. But regardless of the design of the postboxes, what is more important is that any mail that dropped into the postboxes get delivered on time to the recipients, isn't it?

Nostalgic Looking Postbox in China

Stamp collectors, by our very nature, are people who are perhaps more attracted to nostalgic looking items.

Thus recently when I was in ShangHai, this nostalgic looking postbox (信筒）caught my attention. I think the Chinese are still using such old-fashion postboxes. This post box is located at a fairly touristy location and not some old forgotten street. The post box denoted 3 collection timing (which is 1 more slot compared to Singapore Post):

1st Collection - 9:46
2nd Collection - 14:16
3rd Collection - 17: 46

Partly inspired by the postbox, I decided to mail to myself some letters from ShangHai. It took quite a while to reach my home, and the postage is actually more expensive compared to posting of international letters by SingPost. For memory sake I guess it is worth it.

Postboxes from London & Stockholm

I was away for a work trip in London and Stockholm, and I took some pictures of their post boxes. The London postbox looks historical, i.e. like those postboxes from the colonial era. I think Singapore no longer has such red tubular postboxes, except for the one outside the Philatelic Museum. Posting personal letters from such historical looking postboxes should be fun. The postboxes from Stockholm look a lot more modern and fancy.

London Postbox with details about posting timing

Stockholm Postbox - Outside the Central Train Station

I didn't have much time for any philatelic related visits, partly because my work meeting timings were pretty tight. There is this Post Museum in Stockholm which looks interesting, and given time I would have pay a visit. Nonetheless I've sent some post cards back home, and once they reached I could post the pictures of them on the blog.

Postbox Public Art Competition 2007

This sounded a bit late, but nonetheless the event was an interesting postal related development in Singapore. There was a "Nation-wide Postbox Public Art Competition" held in 2007, organised by an online web and design group, FARM and jointly presented by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore Post, Singapore Totalisator Board and Singapore Turf Club. About 40 postboxes around the city area got a new layer of artistic paint, which added some local flavour according to the locations of the postboxes.

I was around Bugis area when I saw this group of people painting these postbox and thought it as a cool thing. Took the picture of the Bugis cat postbox. There used to be a big fat black cat at the Bugis Village, wonder if the artists were inspired by that particular cat. <I lost that picture of the Bugis postbox. Sigh sometimes blogspot just loses picture and I can never figure out why. Below is the new picture I've taken of the final product recently>

Subsequently I took pictures of other postboxes, and here's some of them. Two of the pics are pixelated because my phone camera doesn't work that well at night. Here's the one at Fortune Centre. The design sort of accurately portrayed the 'fortune' aspects, i.e. see the 3 green 'Fa' in the centre of the jackpot design?

This is the one at Millenia Walk, which sort of looks normal, i.e. nothing special about it.

The one at Shaw Tower (Beach Road) looks like a cereal box, heh, and has the recipe for a Great Nation.

The one at Tekka Market features bamboo (of course). Tekka means 'bamboo feet' in hokkien.

Now, in case you wonder how does the normal postbox looks like, here's a picture of it. There are also metallic postboxes around, but I don't have a picture of them.

Two winners emerged from the competition, one of them is a professional illustrator while the other is a primary 4 kid. You could look at their postbox design at the FARM website. Quite cool right? Wonder if there will be another Postbox Competition this year or 2009. Maybe they can extend the competition to other postboxes around the island.

Afternote: here's two more postboxes.

Penisular Plaza Postbox:

SMU Postbox: