Every city, town, village and rural subdistrict in Vietnam has some sort of post office (buu dien). Post offices all over the country keep long hours, from about 6.30am to 9pm including weekends and public holidays (even Tet). Vietnam has a pretty reliable post service these days. Gone are the days of your stamps being steamed off and your postcards being delivered to the rubbish bin. International postal rates are similar to those in European countries. Postcards cost from 7000d to 10.000d depending on the destination. Items mailed from anywhere other than large towns and cities might take a month to arrive at their international destination. Airmail service from HCMC and Hanoi takes approximately five to 10 days to get to most Western countries. Express-mail service (EMS), available in the larger cities, is twice as fast as regular airmail and everything is registered. Private couriers such as FedEx, DHL and UPS are reliable for transporting small parcels or documents. Po.stc restante works well in post offices in Hanoi and HCMC. Foreigners must pay a small service charge for each letter received through the poste restante. Receiving even a small package from abroad can cause a headache and large ones will produce a migraine. If the parcel contains books, documents, CDs, DVDs or dangerous goods it's possible that a lengthy inspection will be required, which could take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.