Post Office. There are other little Post Offices dotted around the place (including one just a couple of roads behind the compound) but we thought we would head to the main one to get our first little piles of mail sent off. The GPO is a beautiful building with a fantastic view over Doha Bay. When you drive in, you actually have to drive up about 3 floors in the car park as I think the lower levels are all the offices etc. The actual main floor of the Post Office is a bit like the Tardis… looks small outside but very open and spacious once you enter.
Our experience inside consisted of lining up at one window and being pointed towards what is basically a souvenir stand to get large envelopes, then returning to the first window to get everything weighed (and the postage amounts written in pencil where stamps would normally go). This weighing process was of course interrupted by at least one mobile phone call, which was more important to answer than weighing our mail. After the weighing process we were handed everything back, then of course had to find out where to get the stamps from… this consisted of pushing everything back through the same small window to the same person (who really wasn’t very interested in being a part of our overall posting experience) to get the stamps! After being handed everything back with a large number of stamps and much licking and sticking we were pointed in the direction of the little mail holes near the entrance (which are obviously for letters and not for parcels, but if you try you can actually fit something medium sized through the hole).To be honest I don’t really know what to make of all this. I know the parcels we sent were sent as large letters, rather than parcels… I also know we didn’t have to fill in any customs declarations or put on any airmail stickers. The only people in the place that looked remotely interested in life in general were the two women sitting at the customer service desk having a chat (and they were quite happy to help staple our envelopes with us as the sticky stuff didn’t stick). Everyone else looked pretty disinterested about everything, but maybe that is the general attitude to working in a Govt Dept during a Ramadan morning!
As a side note we do know now that everything arrived safe and sound so we (and they) must have done something right. At the same time we have received all the Airmail parcels we sent to ourselves via Australia Post, plus the last Sea Mail parcel. We think everything has probably now arrived that we sent but is probably all awaiting the customs people to fossick through it all to see if there is anything they deem unsuitable (which I think translates into “anything they want” but I could be wrong). Everything we have received has been opened and checked thus far… we don’t actually know how well they check what is in there and I think they might just do the open and reseal thing to make it look like they have checked. After all no one checked anything in our bags when we came through customs at the airport, so we really have no idea how thorough they are with the whole process. Plus the bacon that is available here has to come in somehow!
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