Curious Mailboxes
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I found mention of a few interesting mailboxes and thought I give them a post. First is the Underwater Post Office located off of Hideway Island in the Republic of Vanuatu. This post office is located a little over fifty yards off-shore and about three yards beneath the surface of the water. The Vanuatu Post trained four employees as divers and staffs the office about one hour a day depending on interest with at least one staff member and somebody else standing by for safety reasons. There is also an underwater drop box for other hours of the day to post the special waterproof cards. The Vanuatu Post also operates a volcano mailbox on the rim of an active volcano on Tanna Island which serves as their second “Xtreme” postal location. |
Off the coast of Susami in the Wakayama Prefecture of Japan is an underwater mailbox located eleven yards beneath the surface where up to two hundred pieces of mail are collected daily. Our next curious postal location is courtesy of Malaysia where the Reef Dive Resort at Mataking Island sank the forty foot wooden cargo ship “Mataking 1″ to form an artificial reef and opened a post office in the ship’s wheelhouse which is picked up twice a week and mail receives a special stamp. In Coral World Ocean Park’s Undersea Observatory located on Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, you can send mail from under the water without actually getting wet. Coral World International also operated an underwater mailbox on Paradise Island, Nassau in the Bahamas, but the park is “temporarily closed to the public“.
Last but not least back on the US mainland, the USPS changed four hundred of their 280,000 regular collection boxes into R2-D2 as part of their Star Wars Jedi Shipping/Mailing Master campaign. They look kind of neat in the picture anyway, but they will only be around for a few weeks before changing back to their original blue form.
Fark Referer
digg Referer
OhGizmo! Referer
Gadling – Underwater Post Offices and Mailboxes Around the World
Divester – Underwater Mailboxes
