{"id":1139,"date":"2011-01-28T23:24:36","date_gmt":"2011-01-28T15:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2013-07-01T19:56:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T11:56:17","slug":"laos-shipping-quotations-for-e-commerce-oscommerce-zen-cart-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/2011\/01\/28\/laos-shipping-quotations-for-e-commerce-oscommerce-zen-cart-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Laos shipping quotations for e-commerce (osCommerce, Zen Cart etc)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I met a couple of friends in Vientiane<\/a> recently (25th Jan 2011) as they were touring Laos<\/a>. I had half a day free at the end of the visit, so I executed a ‘brute force search’ of Vientiane to find the cost of shipping parcels overseas. Vientiane is a lovely, charming, welcoming city. You should go there soon before someone ‘develops’ it. It’s the sort of place where you can turn up as a stranger and walk around asking people stuff and they’re mostly genuinely helpful – or at least cheerful about not being able to help!<\/p>\n

\"Laos<\/a>

Laos Post Office HQ (Entreprise Postes des Lao) in Vientiane (EMS \/ philately shop is here!)<\/p><\/div>\n

I found the head office of Entreprise des Postes Lao<\/a> (EPL) quickly enough (no web presence at all) and after walking in and out of doors (this was brute force remember: I speak no Lao and had no clue) and asking everyone I met, I was directed to a door at the back and a very helpful woman recognised “list” in my question and gave me some printed sheets of shipping rates. On the sheets were prices for EMS<\/a>, international letter and ‘imprimer intl’ which I’m guessing is franked mail. Lots of things are also in French in Laos, which is difficult for a monoglot Briton like me, but I have to be grateful for the legacy the French have left on the quality of bread, cake and all sorts of other food in Laos.<\/p>\n

I added the EMS rates to spider.my’s shipping quotations API, as I thought it would be the more likely one to be used for e-commerce. If you’re interested in setting up an osCommerce<\/a>– or Zen Cart<\/a>-based online shop in Laos, you can install either the osCommerce shipping module<\/a> or the Zen Cart shipping module<\/a> and your shop will include accurate* quotes for international shipping in order totals.<\/p>\n

The Laos Post International EMS shipping rates are fairly straightforward. Most likely destinations for e-commerce are covered, though as you can see on the Shipping Quote World Map<\/a>, EPL’s zones don’t provide complete coverage of every possible destination.<\/p>\n

*The obvious problem lies with keeping the Laos shipping rates up to date. I had to fly to Vientiane and walk into the EPL office, and meet someone helpful who just gave me what I wanted when possibly the only word we had in common was “list”. What would be lots better would be if someone from EPL could contact me<\/a> so that I could get an electronic copy of their rates from time to time. If anybody can help me arrange that, I’d be very grateful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I met a couple of friends in Vientiane recently (25th Jan 2011) as they were touring Laos. I had half a day free at the end of the visit, so I executed a ‘brute force search’ of Vientiane to find the cost of shipping parcels overseas. Vientiane is a lovely, charming, welcoming city. You should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,40,60,67,35],"tags":[21,8,111],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecommerce","category-life","category-money","category-shipping","category-spidermy","tag-e-commerce","tag-oscommerce","tag-spidermy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lolyco.com\/sean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}