50th Anniversary of ASEAN

Myanmar Post announced on 7th Nov that the stamps tor the commemoration of 50th anniversary of ASEAN will be released on 11 Nov 2017.  As I reported before, Laos, Brunie and Myanmar did not participated in joint issue, but now Myanmar surprisingly announced the stamp will be issued. In the newspaper announcements,  Burmese Padauk is mentioned as national flower. 

The appearance on The Mirror (Left), The Myanma Alin (Right Top)
and The New Light of Myanmar (Right Botton)

Technical Details of Stamps

Date of Issue : 11 November 2017 

Printer : Security Printing Works (Myanmar)

Printing Process : Offset

Stamp Size and Format : 30 mm x 42 mm (Vertical)

Color : 4

Perforation : 14

Denomination : K1000

Sheet Composition :  50 Stamps per Sheet
Quantity : 100,000 pcs
Stamp Designers : Myanmar Post

First Day Covers

FDC by Stamps Myanmar

FDC by Myanmar Philatelic Society (Limited Edition of 450 covers)

FDC by KWK (Limited edition of 15 covers)

Official FDC by Myanmar Post

First Day Cancellations of Yangon GPO, Naypyitaw CPO and Mandalay GPO

Padauk as a national flower

Relating to the national flower of Myanmar and ASEAN nations, I have reported in this blog.  Laos recently issued 10 stamps set featuring national flowers of ASEAN countries, just about 8 months before the ASEAN joint issues of stamps featuring national flowers.  Joint issue is for commemoration of 50th anniversaries of forming ASEAN and Laos, Brunie and Myanmar did not participate in the joint issue.

In the set issued by Laso PDR, Padauk is used as Myanmar national flower.  The stamp is valued at 1000K. 

Date of issue - 12 Dec 2016

Another International Reply Coupon

International Reply Coupons for Burma are scarce and rarely seen on online auctions. Richard Warren reported one coupon with 4 annas value cancelled 30 May 1941 in Fantail 30. Another IRC with 62 pyas denomination (VINNEA type) was acquired recently and it is good to report here. It is cancelled “RANGOON GPO / TREAS” on 14 Sept 1971.

Toe Kyaw Kyar, "Notes & queries: Another International Reply Coupon", The Burma Fantail, Vol. 14, No. 4, Whole Number 54, pp. 56, October 2017.

<notes>
VI These were given the designation VI for the different types. The so called Vienna type of IRC‘s, launched by the UPU at the end of 1965 and early 1966 as a result of the UPU Congress held in Vienna 1964. This type lasted until 1975. To verify the sub-type one has to study the reverse as well as the obverse. This coupon is (Vienna) type VI-XX.

U Bein bridge on France stamp

France issued new booklet featuring "BRIDGES AND VIADUCTS" recently.  The bridges which illustrate the stamps of this notebook were chosen to show architectures from different periods, different countries, made in different materials, allowing the passage from one bank to another of people on foot or by bicycle, trains, Cars, tramways, cargo loads, etc.  One of the set featured "U Bein bridge of Amarapura, Burma".

Technical Details

Issue Date: 02.09.2017
Illustrator: Etienne Thery
Process: Heliogravure
Size: 38 x 24 mm
Values: 8.76€

Chauk Post Office

Chauk PO is located in Chauk twonship, Magwe Division.  I visited on 31 Jan 2017 and get warm greeting by manager of the post office.  It is grade 2 post office and its postal code is 04171.  The nearest attraction is May Day square.  Click the link for location on the map.  The PO building is colonial building with long history of postal service.  Vintage metal plate with the words "LETTERS" is the door flap for the posting box embedded in the wall of building. 

Chauk Post Office

Vintage wall type mail box

Registered Mail from Chauk to Singapore (sent on 31 Jan 2017)

Additional Input to Telegraph Telecommunications under the Burmese Kings

Additional Input to Telegraph Telecommunications under the Burmese Kings
Toe Kyaw Kyar, Hlwan Hmi

Under the reign of King Mindon, many scholars were sent to India, Bangladesh and Rangoon to study on the telegraphic technologies.  The telegraph lines were set up between 1869 and 1877.

The blue route, from Mandalay to Meeaday (Myede, Aunglan), was completed in 1869.  The towns and villages along the telegraph line are as follows:

1. Mandalay (Amarapura)[1]
2. Innwa (Ava)
3. Myingyan[2]
4. Ngetpyittaung
5. Pagan
6. Ywatha
7. Ngasintgu (Singu)[3]
8. Pakhange
9. Yenangyaung
10. Wetmasut
11. Minhla (Taipyauk village)[4]
12. Taunggwin
13. Sinbaungwe
14. Dagon-maw village[5]
15. Myede

The green route, from Mandalay to Mongnai, was completed on 11 March 1877.  From Nyaungshwe, the line is split into two destinations.  The telegraph lines were connected through the following towns and villages.

1. Mandalay (Amarapura)
2. Innwa (Ava)
3. Kyaukse
4. Ywangen
5. Kyaukhtet
6. Nyaungshwe
7. Kyankone (Inndain village)
8. Moebyal
9. Naungmon
10. Mone (Mongnai)

The purple route, from Mandalay to Bamho, was completed on 20 March 1877.  The telegraph line went through

1. Mandalay (Amarapura)
2. Madaya
3. Yenatha
4. Ngasintgu (Singu)[6]
5. Samparnagho
6. Tingamaw
7. Tagaung
8. Shwegu
9. Bhamo

References

Historical Maps of Burma. Retrieved from http://www.freelibraryonline.com/book_download.php?file=33524

Tin Naing Toe (2006). Burmese scholars in late Konbaung Dynasty (1^st ed.).

---

[1] Mandalay Telegraph Office is the headquarters of all TOs under Burmese King.  The recorded telegrapher is Maung Ohn employed since 1874.

[2] The recorded telegrapher is Maung Koon employed since 1875.

[3] Singu in Myingyan District

[4] Minhla Telegraph office is also called Taipyauk TO, as it is situated near Taipyauk village.  It is near to Myinkun, on the opposite bank of Minhla village.  The recorded telegraph operator is Maung Sone, employed since 1871.

[5] The recorded telegrapher is Maung Kyee Nyo employed since 1874.

[6] Singu in Mandalay District.  

Citation: Toe Kyaw Kyar, Hlwan Hmi, "Additional inputs to Telegraph Telecommunications under the Burmese Kings", The Burma Fantail, Vol. 14, No. 3, Whole Number 53, pp. 40-41, July 2017.

High Value Definitives of 2017

To cope with the new postage rates adopted on 25 May 2017, new high value definitive stamps were issued.  The new rate cost 1000K for ordinary foreign mail up to 20 gram and additional 1500K for registration fees for registered mail, which will cost total of 2500K.  Two new stamps are face valued at 1000K and 2500K which can be solo used for ordinary and registered mail.  The design is similar to previous definitive issue of 1990's, xylophone and harp but different image.

Newspaper Announcement

Digital Arts

Technical Details of Stamps

Date of Issue : 27 July 2016 

Printer : Security Printing Works (Myanmar)

Printing Process : Offset

Stamp Size and Format : 30 mm x 42 mm (Vertical)

Color : 4

Perforation : 14

Denomination : K1000, K2500

Sheet Composition :  50 Stamps per Sheet

FDC by Ko Sein Minn (cancelled at Mandalay GPO)

FDC cancelled at Naypyitaw CPO

FDC by Myanmar Philatelic Society (limited to 300 covers)
 

Solo use of 2500K stamp, registered to Singapore.

Ordinary mail, 1000K rate to Singapore.

Kalaw Post Office

Kalaw Post Office is located on Pyidaungsu Road, Kalaw.  It is grade 2 PO, of which postal code is 06021. I visited Kalaw PO on 1 Nov 2016. Click the link for location on the google map.

Kalaw PO

Front - Registered Cover from Kalaw to Singapore (sent on 1 Nov 2016)

Front - Registered Cover from Kalaw to Singapore (sent on 1 Nov 2016)
Yangon GPO Sorting 5 Nov, Foreign Post 7 Nov

Theravada Buddhist University Post Office

Theravada Buddhist University Post Office is located at in Mayangone township, and it is not so far from Mayangone post office as well.  The PO is on Swel Daw Street, near to the Buddha Tooth Relic Pagoda. It is grade 3 PO, of which postal code is 11063. Click the link for location on the google map.

The PO is at the basement of the admin building.

During my visit, the post office is closed.

The mailbox hanged outside of the PO.

The PO is in the basement of the administration building of the University.  I visited the PO on 27 Jan 2017.  By the time of my visit, the PO is closed and staff are out for lunch. So, I dropped the mail into the mailbox hanged outside of the PO.

The mail is handstamped with the PO name and postmark in Burmese.  The mail is cancelled three days after I dropped the mail.

Myanmar Theme Update (May 2017)

I recently noticed, one issue from Austria, which design depicted the graffiti art on the slabs of the Berlin wall.  The artwork created on one of the slab is the portarit of Aung San Suu Kyi.  This issue had probably been released in early 2017.

Sierra Leone issued new stamps set/MS featuring the famous ladies. Among which, Aung San Suu Kyi is also featured. Perforated and im-perforated versions available.

Four-nation Stamp Exhibition, 2017

Four-nation stamp exhibition (2017) was held in the Emquartier, Bangkok, Thailand from 10 to 12 March.  I have exhibited my five frames exhibit named "Burma's commemorative covers with special cachet (1937 - 1948)" under the postal history category.  And this exhibit hit 73 points and won the Large Silver medal award.

This exhibit is the extended version of three frames exhibit displayed in 2015.   It includes study of historical events covers and philatelic covers, postmarks on it, cachet creators and varieties of cachet designs made by individuals.The material in this exhibit includes Last Day Covers, First Day Covers, Commemorative Covers, Newspaper Wrappers, Newspaper cut-outs and registration receipt. Well known philatelists, at that time, made their own private covers for stamps issues, philatelic events and historical events.  The exhibit includes 4 stamps, 109 covers and 5 newspaper wrappers.

Election Slogan (2015)

On 8 Nov 2015, the general election was held.  In the pre-election period, Myanmar Post struck the outgoing mails from Yangon GPO with the slogan mark for the check voters' list campaign.  The slogan reads "Is your name in the voters' list? Check immediately!"

Union Day Postcards

ယနေ့ကြရောက်သော နှစ် ၇၀ ပြည့်ပြည်ထောင်စုနေ့ကို ဂုဏ်ပြုလျှက် မိမိစုဆောင်းထားသော ပို့စကတ်များထဲမှ ပြည်ထောင်စုနေ့ပို့စကတ်များကို မျှဝေပေးလိုက်ပါတယ်။

ပြည်ထောင်စုနေ့

တို့ညီနောင် တည်ဆောင်ပြုတဲ့
ပြည်ထောင်စုနိုင်ငံ
ဆန်းသစ်မူဟန်
တို့အောင်လံ
အောင်သံနဲ့ငြိမ့်အေး
စိတ်ထားတူညီညီနဲ့
လုပ်အားတူညီညီနဲ့
ရှေ့သို့ဆီသာစခန်းကို
လှမ်းကြစို့လေး။
(အလံတော်ကြိုဆိုရေး အမှတ် ၂ စခန်း အမှတ် ၅ နယ်မြေ ပို့စကတ်ပါ ကဗျာ)

Khaung Daing Post Office

Khaung Daing PO is located on Khaung Daing village, Nyaung Shwe township, Shan State (South).  Click the link for the exact location on the map. The PO is grade 6 PO and its postal code is 06088.  The nearest attraction to this PO is Khaung Daing hot spring where you can take the bath in natural hot spring water.  The post office itself is attached to the private tuition and sunflower seeds production where you can see the process. 

Khaung Daing Post Office

Khaung Daing Postmark in Burmese

The mail sent from Khaung Daing cancelled at Nyaung Shwe PO

Postmarks in the transition period of postal reform

Postal reform in Myanmar is started in 2014, and is ongoing.  Changing new postmarks is also part of reform process.  We have seen Yangon GPO postmark (reported in Fantail 42) and Foreign Post postmark (reported in Fantail 44).  Recent acquisition of postmarks shows that some of the post offices started using new postmark distributed by the Myanmar Post.  U Kham Aung, Deputy General Manager of Planning and Training Department at Myanmar Post and Telecommunications, personally handed over new postmarks (cancellers) to postmasters during meetings, according to the postmaster in Nyaungshwe post office. 

Some post office has got new postmark, but they keep using the old cancellation, while the new one is kept in drawer.  New postmarks were acquired in favor from some of the post offices in Shan state.  The best example is Nyaungshwe post office; they reuse the regular English postmark after striking me the new postmark in favor (shown in recently acquired postmarks).  So, mostly, the new type postmarks from other towns except Yangon are rarely seen on covers.  The new cancellers are pre-ink stamp of the brand “MaxStamp”.

 To reference this article, please cite:

Toe Kyaw Kyar, "Postmarks in transition period of postal reform", The Burma Fantail, Vol. 14, No. 1, Whole Number 51, pp. 7-8, January 2017.