angela_k

I've always thought of postcards as something to collect, rather than to send to friends and family. You know how it goes: you're shopping for souvenirs, see a beautiful postcard, and end up buying it for yourself. You don't really use it for anything, and they just pile up. It was only quite recently that this habit of mine changed. This is the story of how I really started to send out postcards, both in and outside Postcrossing.com.

One day I was traveling around Myanmar and got to talk to a local man who was selling souvenirs at a deserted temple. His English was just enough for us to communicate. He said very few people would visit that temple, and that sometimes he would go a whole week without spotting any tourists in the area. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to move to other sites as each salesperson must have a government permit to work, and each permit only allows work at a specific location.

He didn't sell postcards, but paintings. They were made with sand and were very resistant to scratching, folding and rubbing. I said I would buy one to send to my mom, and he rolled it up and wrapped it with newspaper, saying I could fold it many times and mail it to my hometown, and my mom would still receive it in one piece.

That afternoon I came back to the hotel thinking about what I had just witnessed: an artist in an isolated temple, surrounded by tiny pagodas under the scorching sun, waiting for tourists -- who were few and far between and, more likely than not, didn't buy anything from him because they had already bought tons of souvenirs from others.

The thought of buying something from every single salesperson on each trip is simply unrealistic, and for two reasons: it costs money and we'd have to carry all souvenirs for the rest of the trip. Being a light traveler on a budget, these two reasons are enough to stop me from buying everything I'd like to. And then it finally occurred to me: why not buy souvenirs I could send by post? Postcards are the perfect solution: they are cheap, and so are the stamps. You don't need to put them in your luggage. And they make people happy too.

On that trip I wrote many postcards, to friends all over the world. Less than a month later, people started to send FB messages and e-mails thanking me for the postcard I had sent them -- and all of them, no exception, said they hadn't received any personal mail in years. They were all so thrilled about it!

I've been sending out postcards like crazy since then, and everywhere I go, no matter how short the trip, I always find time to sit down in a café and write a bunch of postcards. I was so happy to have found Postcrossing.com right in the middle of my postcard craze -- and I hope this craze lasts for years!

What about you? Do you have a story about how or why you started to write postcards? I'd love to know! :)