I’m not sure if this is the best place to post this, but here it is. I just came back from from a 9-day trip to Papua New Guinea, and thought I would share a little information about the mail/postcard situation there, as it is a pretty rare country in the Postcrossing community (and to be honest, the general travel community as well).
I went to PNG to see the Mount Hagen Cultural Show (also known as a Sing Sing) and thought I would be able to buy postcards in town as it is one of the biggest cultural events in the country, but couldn’t find anything (to be fair though, I never made it to the post office there, due to the tour schedule). The only postcards to be had were at the main post office in Port Moresby.
This is the main branch in a local mall (different to what Google Maps will tell you), which is NOT the head office, where I also went - my friend had to send a package from there and I went with him to see if they had different postcards options than the main one downtown (they had none). In the end I was only able to buy four different view cards - one of a bird of paradise, and three slightly different ones featuring the Kokoda Trail. I think I bought out most of their stock - I bought about 40 cards to honour swaps and lotteries, plus to send to family and friends. They might have about 10 left after I basically wiped them out.
I also had about 20 cards that I had pre-bought from Redbubble as a back-up in case I couldn’t find any (or not enough) postcards at the post office. Stamps cost 6.90 kina (about $1 USD) and they had a couple of options, but nothing iconic (even in smaller denominations).
I had two days in Port Moresby at the end of my trip (which included Lae and Mount Hagen, the second and third largest cities after Port Moresby, but none had available postcards, from what I could tell). I bought cards on my first day back to the city and wrote and sent them on the second day (which took about 5 hours total with all the cards I had to write and address). I asked if they would would hand-cancel the cards, which they said they would (but I didn’t see). I also asked if they would cancel some cards that I could keep - they thought that was a bit unusual, but allowed it. I made a couple of maxicards for myself and when they understood what I wanted they allowed me to stamp one of the cards myself (stamp not exact, cancel off centre and a bit smudged, but I’m happy with it):
Overall I found the staff at the main branch super friendly and helpful, even though I stayed past opening hours because there were so many cards to deal with. Here’s a small selection of the bird of paradise cards I sent:
Upon leaving PNG I discovered that one of the shops in the international departures area at the airport also sold postcards (different ones to the post office), but that it was impossible to send cards from that location, even though I still had a few extra stamps to do so. There were also only four different types of cards there, most of which have been sent from PNG Postcrossers in the past.
One surprising location for postcards was the Bomana War Cemetery on the outskirts of the city. I went there with 2 other members of my tour group who were also spending extra time in the city after the tour. One of the guys I was with talked to the caretaker who told him to visit the front office for some pamphlets about the cemetery, but the ladies there also gave each of us a beautiful set of panoramic postcards of the cemetery which made me super happy.
I sent this one to myself just to see how it fares compared to the regular postcards.
I know most people here will probably never visit PNG but hopefully you find this information potentially useful and interesting.
Edit: For the UNESCO World Heritage postcard collectors out there - there is one WHS in PNG, the Kuk Early Agricultural Site. I asked my guide about visiting it but we never did, either because he forgot to follow up on it, or because it was too difficult to access. I thought maybe if we went there I’d be able to source some postcards at the site, but of course that never happened. I know cards exist for this site as I sent one from a fellow postcrosser who asked me to send a few cards on their behalf. Here’s what it looked like:
To everyone who is receiving a card from me (either because of a swap or lottery), or who asked me to post cards on their behalf, please know that I will contact all of you individually soon (with proof of card written and stamped), but as I just returned home today my brain is not up to the finer details of dealing with PM system here on Postcrossing.
All cards were mailed on Thursday, August 24th, 2023.
Total number of cards sent to Postcrossers: at least 50, plus 2 official cards sent in Travel Mode.
I’ll mention this in my private messages but please let me know when you receive the cards as I’ll keep a tally and post the results here, so we can see the average travel time between different destinations - cards were sent to at least 23 different countries in 5 different continents, although there were several countries (like the US and Germany) that were sent multiple cards, mostly due to swaps.
The only mailbox I found in PNG was this old one that was sitting with all the rusted out WWII military vehicles on the grounds of the National Museum and Art Gallery. I’m guessing it is also from that time period (or earlier).
