I was at the new Causeway version of Beirut, which is as consistent if not more breezy than the one in the banking district, when a family entered and was seated at the large table next to us. I watched as the parents and three small boys were accompanied by two maids in white nurse outfits, each carrying large handbags filled with what looked and sounded like garden tools.

I’ve always liked the idea of arbitrary testing, whether its for athletes using drugs or, in this case, for my small fleet of maids who, while being extremely good, have a tendency to sometimes do a half-ass job.

I’m not sure if it was always this way, but for as long as I can remember, whenever my car breaks down in Panama I meet a hilarious taxi driver who becomes, if not a lifelong friend, then certainly a close acquaintance. It was scorching hot out yesterday when I entered one of those extremely small cabs in the banking district driven by a guy named Jorge.

 

There’s this taxi driver I once met in San Miguelito named Raimundo who, totally by chance, picked me up again this morning on my way into the city and we recognized each other immediately. It was the way I imagine I might react when finally meeting my long-lost twin.

Forty minutes into my haircut at Gege’s Salon in Casco Viejo, and I wondered how I had survived all these years without having a manicure. It may have helped, I believe, that there were no less than three gangsters also in the salon having work done on their braids. When my haircut was finished, Gege herself offered a discount manicure and how could I refuse? When she was through, I showed one of the gangsters my hands and he said they looked “excellent.”

In Panama, there’s a doctor I like who accepts walk-in patients and costs about $40 per appointment. He’s located in an unremarkable building on Via Argentina in El Cangrejo and the first time I met him was in a Turkish sauna.

I'm on Panama detox and on a flight from Boston to San Francisco I sat next to an A-list actor who I wouldn't have identified had several people not approached during our flight to ask for autographs. If I wanted to prove myself, I could have said it was his Taliban-like beard or oversized sunglasses that were disguising. He was wearing grungy pants, a ripped t-shirt, and the type of flimsy leather sandals one might expect from a Thai rice farmer mid-season. This was a celebrity, I'd go on to find out later, who recently earned six digits for singing happy birthday at a girls bat mitzvah party or something. 

Without a speckle of a doubt, that which bothers foreigners in Panama most of all the ludicrously unusual characteristics and nuances of life in someone else's country, is the seemingly innate inability of Panamanians to do anything, from attending business meetings to serving a simple hamburger, on time. Give a local a paycheck and you can expect it to be spent, with cat-like reflexes, before the weekend's end but if it's doing anything else promptly you're concerned about, consider yourself victim to The Panamanian Paradox.

My handyman's father passed away on the fourth of July. I remember this not because it was our national day of independence but because it was the day our toilet stopped working. Now, normally broken appliances don't bother me much: in a pinch, I'd dry clothes on a line outside or ask to use the neighbor's fridge. But the toilet has a certain primal duty. That, and it'd be taboo to use an empty flowerpot.

One month after I arrived in Panama, I decided to take the easy way out and gave up on Spanish lessons taught by a Venezuelan guy named Pep. I had studied Spanish throughout high school and college but soon realized that real world application is totally different. When I lived in Spain, people spoke super clearly so when in public, I imagined my life surrounded by lots of professors. Professors that didn't assign any homework. Panamanians though speak incredibly fast and slur their words together, so understanding them is a little like understanding Lil Wayne. My go-to word when I first arrived in Panama was lento which means slow, as in "when you speak, could you slow the fuck down." But what for? It's not as if I understood things the second time around anyway.

"In my country," I tell them, trying hard not to sound like an imposing tourist, "if you commit a bad crime, and they are going to put you into the...into the chair for the death, they give to you one last meal of anything you can choose in the whole world. The price is not important and you can pick your favorite thing to eat before...before you go up above our heads to live with god."

My early years saw a young Matt obsessed with the modern day equivalent to Discovery Channel; this publicly broadcasted station in central New Jersey which I liked because it regularly televised groups of indigenous women in the jungle without their shirts on.

It's a neighborhood where deluxe lifestyles of pink champagne and sleek plasma TVs clash with some of the poorer living conditions in the country. A district recognized around the world as a World Heritage Site for its awe-inspiring architecture and rare European-inspired plazas, yet one which simultaneously plays host to children too poor to even buy shoes for sports, and beggars unembarrassed to plead even for a nickel.

It has long been a symbol of independence and rebellion in the US to have tattoed a Chinese symbol on ones body. People rarely know what their symbols actually mean, but perhaps that's part of the inherent mutiny of it all.

This article was taken from a new Panama blog I started called Los Cuatro Tulipanes Blog (www.loscuatrotulipanes.com/blog). It's a day-to-day blog about living, working and running a boutique hotel in Panama's old quarter of Casco Antiguo or Casco Viejo.

“Talking to strangers is bad” my parents used to say, “because there are predators out there and they might try to nab you.” I found myself often drawing up on sketch pads what these so-called predators might look like and then trying, at all costs, to stay away from anything that fit the part. People in wheelchairs and people with skin diseases were automatically out and strangers for me were purely associated with bad things like kidnapping and bank robberies and poisoned Pez candy.

Dearest Panama,

 

At first I was fearful it was to be a short affair, one fueled by physical attraction and the cockeyed passion of a jilted lover on the rebound. ‘Tis true I was scorned by another (her name: Costa Rica). But years on, I find myself still frighteningly bound by your grip, unable to even ponder another. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

They're pretty fantastic, if you ask me. Maybe they're not as beautiful as the legendary lovelies of Colombia, Venezuela or even Argentina...but they're darn cute. Panama is an incredibly diverse culture, and the wide variety of ethnicities and mixed ancestries makes for some very interesting looking women. If you like women...and what man doesn't, you'll like Panama.

It doesn't take long to realize that Panamanians, not unlike North Americans, are inherently lazy animals: the fibers of their society built around values of convenience and languor. A good first indicator is the country's economic and social livelihood: a glorified shortcut! So while this laziness can be frustrating to ambitious people, to others like me it can be a delight.

My evenings are often spent socializing with young Panamanian men and women who enjoy hanging out with me because, for lack of a better reason, I speak English. Their efforts at my language—much like my efforts at theirs—are usually disjointed and raw, the sort of mush you might hear leak out from under the cushion of an ESL couch; where strings of garbled mispronunciations rarely resemble a cogent thought.