While we were in Singapore, we decided to send some unnecessary clothing and accumulated souvenirs back to England.
This was actually the second round of lightening our load—while in Melbourne, we sent a 10kg box of clothing and acquired items home in what turned out to be quite an ordeal.
Assuming from prior experience that it would be fairly straightforward, we trotted down to a post office in St Kilda and purchased two of their largest boxes and a roll of tape, asked about pricing and left thinking we’d come back the next day, fill in a customs forms with ‘miscellaneous goods’, pay the postage and be done with it.
The woman behind the counter did not inform us of any special procedures we had to undertake, so we duly took our supplies back to the flat, loaded up two boxes with 5 kg each, used our entire roll of tape to secure them, and the next day took them to a different post office to mail them off.
When we got to the counter, a much more helpful woman asked us if we’d filled in our customs form on line (we had not) and informed us that ever since Brexit, packages sent from Australia to England required a detailed list with the description, weight, origin and value of every.single.item in each box.
Thank you, Brexit.
[The only bonus at this juncture was that this different post office was across the street from an entirely gluten free bakery and cafe, so we indulged in cakes and coffee before heading back to the flat to complete the mammoth task of documenting all the sundry items we planned to send to England].
We had to buy a new (bigger) box and more tape, go back to the flat, unbox everything, weigh everything to the nearest gram and fill in the incredibly detailed form online.
For each item, there was a drop down menu with various descriptions of the general category selected. Were the socks men’s or women’s? cotton or polyester? long or short? Where were they purchased? What was their value?
This went on for every item we were sending back and the process took literally hours.
Finally, one completely taped up 10kg box later, we were ready to send it off. Back to the post office the next day, the helpful lady scanned the QR code we’d gotten when we submitted our form online, printed out the ridiculously long form detailing dozens of individual items we were sending back (which in total had to be valued at less than £39 or we’d have to pay customs duties), took our money and sent our box into the void.
As far was we know, it has not yet arrived (we chose the cheapest route—by sea) but we were told it could take up to 70 days. Who knows if we will ever see those things again?
It may seem surprising that we were willing to go through all that again in Singapore, but once we hit the tropics, we knew there were things we’d never wear again on this trip and we desperately wanted to get our rolling backpacks under 18kg each.
We found a nearby post office, bought their largest box, more tape and went back to the flat and started loading it up, quickly realizing that we’d bought way too large a box—so, back to the post office for a smaller one.
When we logged in to fill in the online customs form we expected to have to repeat the whole process again but surprisingly, and thankfully, the Singapore form for the UK only had 5 lines for contents, so I ‘summarized’ the items by broad general categories, weighing, describing and valuing each group.
It was far, far easier this time around.
Again, we sent the package by sea, but have tracking on this one, so we will have some idea of when it might arrive.
Although it was a huge pain to get these two packages sent off, we were so happy to have lightened our load going into SE Asia and contemplating lugging our bags into and out of hotels, up and down many flights of stairs, and on and off trains, buses, ferries and taxis.
Of course the added benefit was also that now we had more room for souvenirs and gifts! Yay!
Update: On May 28th, the box from Singapore arrived in perfect condition and full of souvenirs from Australia, Taiwan and Singapore plus clothes we were happy to have back. That box took 68 days to arrive (2 months + 1 week), which was exactly how long they said it would take. (Good old Singapore efficiency!).
The box from Australia, mailed on 28 February has yet to arrive…
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