Thursday, December 11, 2008

cardboard box miracle

Since coming to the Phlippines, I have learned of the miracle of Balikbayan Boxes. Literally it means "return to homeland," and it's the means of shipping large or heavy items back to the Philippines without breaking the bank.

To begin with, many Filipinos will go overseas to find jobs. They are known as Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs), and they will typically send back money to their loved ones still living in the Philippines. By plane it takes 22 hours to go from Florida to Manila, the capital of the Philippines. You can only imagine what it would cost to send a 100 pound package here... yeah, practically as much as a plane ticket! So what people have done is create a system to solve this problem.

A person overseas will get a large cardboard box, fill it with as many goods as possible, and then ship it overseas on a slow boat. It can take up to 3 months for it to go half way around the world, but it's done for only around $100. The best part? The package is delivered door-to-door and the sender's receipt is a picture of the recipient getting the box!

As you can imagine, the balikbayan box is ideal for shipping books. There is no weight limit, and as long as the box stays together, plus I can get them to deliver the box straight to the school so I don't have to carry it myself, :) we're all set!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.abs-cbnglobal.com/Products/StarKargo/tabid/125/Default.aspx

--My cousins in US use this cargo company to deliver balikbayan boxes to Manila.

Anonymous said...

or this http://www.johnnyair.com/

--Thank you for helping my countrymen. God Bless to you and your family =)