The Panama Experience

It’s been a little while since I left Panama and I had to take a little time to process all the information and look at everything from a new perspective.

So this is my final post about my trip to Panama, which will include some pictures, but most importantly you will learn, how the whole place felt like and what are my perspectives and opinions about the amazing Panama.

First of all, the main reason for this trip was for me to figure out how I could open up a business in Panama and how the real-estate market is working there.

With that being said, the daytime was spent on research and going to certain government bureaus to figure out the commerce requirements. The first days were spend on running around, until we figured out that bureaucracy is really an issue there, taking a few months until you can actually open something (if you do it the right way).

Now for me to be able to open something there, they have a certain monetary requirement which is not small, however to figure out the market, you would need to live there for a while and learn everything, because you can’t jump off the cliff without being sure about your safety. The next thing that was really interesting, however in my eyes extremely stupid, was the fact that if you wanted to work there, you needed a work permit. Getting one was pretty clear, that you need to have an offer of employment from a company, now the issue starts here, as most of the companies only hire you if you have a work permit, even if they want foreigners as employees. The next thing you will be told is that they don’t issue you an offer of employment for you to get a work permit. For me this was just a stupid thing or they are trying to avoid some taxes or obligations of emitting employment offers. Who knows, nobody clarified this for me 🙂

The next interesting thing about Panama in general is the contrast between the rich and poor, this is mostly visible as you go through the city. As mentioned in my first post, whenever taking a taxi ride, you will most probably go through a ghetto or two depending on your trip, which are next to main business and central areas. Even the Casco Viejo area is next to a slum of the city, which is kinda interesting yet dangerous.

Below you can see a few pictures of the Santa Ana area and the famous old town, Casco Viejo:

Guess what… people still use payphones here, which was a surprise for me as the last one I saw was in 2007, which was still functional.

The so called Coca Cola restaurant, my friend told me that it’s a very famous restaurant and it still looks like as in the old days, like you went back in time. The food was really good, I tried a dish of seafood.

Guys like this litter the whole city, at one point I just had to ask what are they selling. It turns out that those are lotto tickets. It seems to be a big business in Panama.

This place looks so nice and prestigious, however it was just next door to a slum, which made it funny because this is the Election Court.

And of course, I saw this on my first day but didn’t take any photos of it. It’s a bus station near the biggest mall in Central America (as Panamanians tell me), where those mean buses are stopping inside the building to pick up passengers 🙂

So my journey ended with a flight over the Panama Canal as you can see in the second picture below.

It was really an amazing experience, where I met some amazing people that made everything so good and who were there to help me with all I needed. I’m going to wait for my Panamanian friends to visit me in Transylvania during the summer so they can have a little taste of the music festivals we got.

As an overall feeling on Panama City, it’s a big city in a small country with a very diverse population, however the city still needs a lot more time to develop itself to truly be a safe place and a destination for more tourists. From a business point of view it needs to loosen up on the criteria imposed in some cases and the time it takes to open a company should be less of a hassle.

The people are great, they love to enjoy the time spent with others, a place where you can have good fun and attend some crazy parties. The place has a lot of casinos, so if you’re into that, enjoy yourself.

It’s sad to leave behind the people who I met, it’s never easy when you feel so good around them. Hopefully soon they will invent teleportation and we can enjoy spending time with people all over the globe.

Watch out for my next post on my trip to Slovakia.