It arrived five weeks after we returned. A postcard sent from the Central Post Office in Hanoi, it had made its way to Australia by sea.

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Throughout the holiday, we'd kept the family up to date with photos every day. Ethereal sunrises on Ha Long Bay, pulsing streetlife in the Vietnamese capital, breathtaking rice terraces in Sapa. Instant postcards which arrived as soon as they were sent, travelling at light speed via the internet's optical fibres.

I hadn't thought about physical postcards for years but on this afternoon, we'd sought refuge from the blistering heat in the cavernous post office in the old French Quarter on the eastern shore of Hoan Kiem Lake. Apart from a couple of travellers and staff the place was deserted. And there on a stand a collection of postcards resembling travel posters from the 1930s caught my eye.

I chose one and sat down to write a message to send back home. We'd stepped back in time and were doing an old-world thing, composing a brief communique on the back of a card, buying stamps to pay for its passage across the ocean and placing it in the post box at the front of the building. Wondering if this little memento of our travels would actually make it to its destination, a photo was taken of it being posted.

And if it did, would it surprise the recipient? It did. And happily so. An unexpected rectangle of colour amid the window-pane envelopes containing bills and bank statements. In all likelihood, destined to find a place on the fridge, unlike the digital photos, flashed up on the phone upon arrival and forgotten soon after.

Long after the sending of the postcard had slipped my mind, I learned of its arrival via a digital messaging app: "Oh my gosh, it's a postcard from Hanoi! How marvellous!" Such joy from such a simple gesture - not just for the recipient but for the sender as well, as memories of the trip flooded back.

In this era of overheated digital communication, of social media snapshots from 500 of your closest "friends" so commonplace they barely register, there is still a place for the postcard. It's not just oldies like me - who fondly remembers sending and receiving them but has succumbed to the cold urgency of digital communications.

Zoomers and Millennials, who grew up as digital natives, are discovering the joys of postcards and spreading their love for the old world relics, ironically,........

© Canberra Times