When I was a child I remember the excitement of receiving postcards and letters from my Uncle Daniel who lived in Europe with foreign and exotic stamps. These simple little reminders that the world was vast broadened my world view and, besides that, they were really interesting. I never got into stamp collecting like my older brother but I tried to send letters directly from Cambodia so that others would get to receive international mail with Khmer script and Cambodian stamps. It’s a little thing but sometimes the little things are meaningful.

Well… The Cambodia Post Office has started charging over $35 dollars to send a letter or post card to the United States, so sadly you will not be receiving any more mail direct from Cambodia for the foreseeable future. It’s probably due to COVID-19 related budget cuts. The Cambodian National Budget has been slashed by over 50% for two years in a row with the Military, Police, and Health seeing budget increases. Other government offices, like the Post, are having to absorb the full reductions and increases so we’re seeing staff layoffs, processing delays, and fee increases.

Instead, we’ll be sending mail to the MCC Office in Akron, Pennsylvania. It’s far more cost effective to mail letters by pound in a single package. The MCC Office will then send our individual letters out from the mail room there. So you’ll probably see cool US stamps but it won’t have that international flair. This is how we had to send our last mailing – which was sent out in March but didn’t arrive until June I believe – but that was due to some logistical challenges and we didn’t know about the price increase at the time.