World Stamp Expo Fun Times!

 

So this blogging game has gotten away from me recently, and as a result there is a bit of catching up to do. About a month ago I was very excited to attend the World Stamp Expo, which was being held in my hometown of Melbourne. The WORLD STAMP EXPO!

The Expo was held at the Royal Exhibition Building, a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage listed building located in the Carlton Gardens. I dragged my dutiful boyfriend along, who patiently accompanied through the myriad stalls from various postal authorities from around the globe. I also dragged my friend Grant along - but he chose to lie in the sun for a couple of hours in the Gardens instead. Each to their own (but you missed out on some fun, Grant!).

As you could well imagine, I made a few purchases over the course of the day. My little bag was full (and my bank account empty) by the end of it. I got a souvenir minisheet to add to my royal kitsch collection, embossed with the Expo logo on it.  And I just couldn't help myself, also adding to my royal collection I got a Wills and Kate FDC.

Moving away from my tacky fascination with royals, I also indulged my love of maps, and found this amazingly beautiful minisheet from Greenland. What a find!

I also visited Deutsche Post, and purchased this lovely minisheet as it features both a map element and the Antarctic, and I love the Antarctic. The combinations of boats and ice always make for beautiful images. Would you agree?

I also found these awesome Indonesian stamps, which I saw when I visited there last year, but resisted buying at the time due to budgetary constraints.

The stamps depict traditional fabric designs from around Indonesia. They are quite lovely, in my opinion.

Anyhow that is a sample of my many purchases from the World Stamp Expo 2013.  It was a very fun day out for a big stamp nerd like me.

And now this stamp nerd is signing off for the time being. I am about to head to Turkey for six and a half weeks! I am very excited and will be working on a Roman archaeological site on the south coast. It is an absolute dream come true and I can't wait to be archaeologising on the other side of the world. So I will try and post to this blog (probably fairly irregularly) over the coming few weeks, but the posts will be archaeologic rather than philatelic in nature. But watch this space!

Adventures in Indonesia

Hello friends, followers and strangers in cyberspace! Lovely to be back online and touching base with the blogosphere. I have just returned to Melbourne after a very fun, jam-packed and delicious two-week sojourn to Indonesia. I was hanging out in Java mostly, but I also managed to spend a couple of days on Bali, embracing my inner bogan.

And whilst I indulged in a LOT of lounging by poolsides, I also managed to climb a couple of volcanoes, hit some hot springs and visit many exquisite temples. I jumped aboard an overnight train, a couple of ferries, hitched rides in minibuses, and I even once caught an ojek - a motorcycle taxi. It was a very grand adventure.

Yep, I had fun.

And I of course found some time for post. First off, in my hunt for post, I went to the Bandung post office. When I buy stamps overseas for my postcards, I always get a few extra for my stamp album. However, I was a very lazy tourist who didn't have much (ok, any) Indonesian (I learnt how to say 'thank-you': terima kasih)- so I walked up to the counter with a smile and asked in English for some stamps to go on postcards to send to Australia, and if it wasn't too much trouble, it would be great if they could be beautiful, because I collect stamps. Terima kasih! (insert big smile here).

The post office lady  looked at me somewhat blankly, but then retreated out the back, and came back with her supervisor, and a whole bunch of these stamps:

She apologised and said that she was sorry, they only had this one design for stamp collectors! I was thrilled! What a great stamp! So I bought several for my postcards, and kept one as a souvenir. Perfecto. Thankyou wonderful post office lady.

But later that day, I hit the post jackpot, when I stumbled upon this little store:

Inside, there was all sorts of trash and treasure... and amongst everything, there were all these vintage first day covers pinned up for sale. Oh yeah: pay dirt!

So, in this little store in Bandung, which I had just stumbled upon while wandering around the city by myself for the day, I managed to find some great post souvenirs to take home and add to my collection. 

The one above is my favourite because it ticks all the right boxes. It:

             a) includes maps with stamps on them,

             b) is postmarked Bandung, the city where I was staying, and

             c) is commemorating a solar eclipse, which makes it just generally COOL. 

And this one not only  includes a map stamp... it is a map stamp with an airmail envelope. Double cool. I actually really like the designs of all these stamps. Here is a closer look:

And again with the Bandung postmark. 

I was pretty thrilled with my haul of FDC postal goodies. But then, once I started asking the guys behind the counter about the covers, they then bought out all these stamp albums for me to look at. Unfortunately I couldn't just buy the stamps I wanted, I had to buy the whole album. So I did. Anyhow, these are a couple of the best stamps from the album I bought:

Yep - stamps celebrating Homo erectus. Wicked.

As you might be able to tell from the scans, some of the stamps were individually wrapped in plastic. That too made me happy (such a careful action, to wrap a stamp so delicately!).

The album is pretty cool... so watch this space. It warrants a blog post all to itself, so at some stage I will scan the album and share it.

Anyhow, in short, my Indonesian holiday was wonderful. And I am excited to have some post to remind me of such a fun trip. And just to be a bit self-indulgent and rub it in, I will sign off with a few little holiday snaps: