One obvious ommission: wearing shorts in town. Not only does this run against Panama standards of dress, but a pair of old, bony, white and flabby legs protruding from the bottom of a pair of bermudas is in poor taste anywhere, no matter how "cool" you feel. Lightweight tropical slacks are the answer. Lose the shorts right along with the flowered shirts. (Young ladies, please disregard)

Oh, shoot. I think I'm totally guilty of that one.

The PFG Columbia fishing shirts. You know the ones with the 4 extra pockets and the flaps all over. Unless youre going for some deep see fishing that afternoon, you look like a gringo. Plus you happen to pair it with some cargo shorts and sandals. You look like your on a 24 hour base pass. And when was the last time you saw a panama hat on a Panamanian? I was in Sahara nightclub the other week and there were a dozen of these guys in cargo shorts all shades of olive drab and flower print shirts that were brighter than the lighting for the band, and sandals. I was glad I was in a nice pair of jeans, polo, and shoes with laces because these guys´behavior matched their outfits; loud. I find that I don´t get randomly asked for my passport now that I dont dress like a gringo.

ps, shorts and sandals are not allowed in gov. offices or banks, ever. If you wouldnt wear it at home, you probably should think twice about wearing it abroad.

I agree with everything here except for the cigars. Men walking the streets while chewing and smoking cigars are an admirable sight.

Okay, I admit I'm biased. After a serious case of bronchitis I decided I should quit cigarettes and set out for an alternative. A pipe? Please, that was fashionable in the times of Jean Paul Sartres and Ellery Queen, and además it's almost impossible to find tobacco for it in Panama. Hence cigars. Need one smoke at all? Yes, of course. Forget anti-smoking campaigns - first practiced on a national scale by the Nazis by the way - and their junk science. Smoking cigars is cool. It shows how man dominates the power of fire. Not only have we beat the dragon, we humiliate him with every cigar we light up: "in your face!" Cigars, data shows, cause less lung cancer and other respiratory problems because you don't inhale the smoke. Like cocaine, the nicotine is absorbed in the nose when you exhale the smoke without it having touched precious lung tissue. You didn't know that, did ya!

Cigars are for real and independent men. Bill Clinton smokes cigars, and if he doesn't smoke them he's forking his mistress with a Cohiba in the oval office. Try that with a cigarette. Cigars are Pierce Brosnan in "After the Sunset" and "The Tailor of Panama." The cigar is the companion of the man who fights his way through whatever jungle he finds himself in. It's Fidel Castro entering Havana in triumph, it's Che Guevara struggling in Bolivia, Winston Churchill masterminding victory over aforementioned Nazis.

If we had a real government in Panama - imagine - we'd see pictures in the papers of cabinet meetings lasting well into the early hours, with ministers chewing on cigar stumps while fighting to solve the country's immense problems. That's the cigar mentality: We won't quit until it's fixed. No wonder you NEVER see phonies like Ruben Blades with a cigar (or Don Winner). Say what you want about Omar Torrijos (a drunk, a killer, dictator, fake populist - all true) but had he been alive today he would be right there IN the jungle taking measures against indigenous children dying, cigar firmly planted between his teeth. He would at least give the impression of taking action instead of, as his son does, turning dying kids into a photo-op in the safe environment of a hospital - where no cigars are allowed of course.

Unfortunately, there's also another breed of cigar smokers, the so-called aficionados. They adhere to the mistaken belief that cigars are wine. Describe the things using the same flowery language - "it just a sort of hangs there in the glass" - and pay ridiculous prices for them. Stay away from these people. They're the snobbish Club Union variety of the real thing; rabiblanco wannabe Mr Can-Do's.

Which brings me to the subject of buying cigars in Panama.

A couple of days ago I went to one of the capital's cigar shops, and after some looking around and suffering from an inexcusable attack of patriotism I found Panamanian cigars, called Joyas de Panama. They were packed in bundles of 25, priced at $7. That turned out to be $7 for each cigar! This was not what I had in mind, so I returned the bundle to the shelf and grabbed a handful of some unknown foreign brand cigars at $0.60 each. I did buy one of these Joyas de Panama, curious.

Well, I just started smoking it, and so far I'm not impressed. It's not that it's a bad cigar - although the outer leaf came loose immediately - but for seven bucks worth of portable forest fire - the things are huge - I had expected more, well, I guess spectacle is the word. I won't buy them again for the same reason I never buy Duran coffee which, coincidentally, grows in the same region as the tobacco of the cigars at hand; it tastes too much like the soil it grew in, with little else to alleviate that problem. It's not that the taste is really bad, but it has no richness either; the cigar is, in fact, too Panamanian: Too much business and not enough ideas. One dimensional. I like the $0.60 ones from abroad a lot better, and that's probably the way it should be. Cigars HAVE to be cheap, or at least affordable. There are times that a smoldering tree trunk is all a man has.

Just to make it clear I don’t give a rats behind if you don’t like my shirts and pants. I wear PDF Colombia because they are dry fast in the tropics. All my shirts have only two pockets. The cargo pockets in my pants are better equipped to store my cell phone and wallet for easy recovery and protection. And the pants are also fast dry for this tropical humidity.

I do, however, agree with your Hawaii flowered short comments. Tevas were out of my style when they were in style. I have, Btw seen you in the city wearing shorts, you liar!

I really enjoyed this article, it reminisces all I have ever learned of being part of where you are. The more effort we make to to be part of where we are the easier it will be to find acceptability. Unless you want to be different. I find the more you look and act like the people around you the more pleasant your relationship with them will be. If you are asked "where are you from"? regularly, You best look to see what's exposed and correct it. Always remember what "Gump" says, "Stupid is What Stupid Does"
"I am what I am and that' all that I am"
Yo Soy!

Hahaha you forgot the "lovely" cheap white sneackers with big black socks (the Japanese men love it too, they use it on the beach), so they can be easily recognized by thieves, bad girls and pickpockets all over the world...

I, in fact, own a Columbia fishing shirt and have been known on occasion to wear it (usually fishing). I feel that its the combination of things that makes you (not you in particular, dont want to start a war here) look like a putz. You know, like sandals with socks. And yes, I do wear shorts in the city, cuz I dont like nut sack fungus. But not to the club, or anywhere else that I dont want to stand out and look like I have a tatoo on my face that says, I AM A RICH CONFUSED GRINGO PLEASE ROB ME. I know it sometimes works on the ladies, but I like to rely on my incredible good looks.
Plus you said that you wear shirts with TWO pockets and cargo PANTS, which I did not actually bash.

Yet another reason to wear brightly colored tropical shirts - get a rise from the locals!

I like being a dirty gringo. I am so good at it, the little kids walking home from school in their perfect uniforms come up to my face and (correcting my Spanish) say 'gringa!' (and that really makes me wonder what they are teaching these kids these days.) Maybe this doesn't apply in the City, but in the interior, I wouldn't be caught dead entering the underbrush in anything but cheap sneakers, however, I prefer white socks with them. The trick here is that you can easily throw them away, and not fear the Customs agent when reentering the first world, cause even though you might have been on a 'finca', you aren't trackin' in the dirt.

so true. not just in panama. the worst was coming back from costa rica and being wedged in between two gringos. once was wearing one of those fishing shirts and playing strip poker on his blackberryesque device, and the other one was so fat that i couldn't breath. ewwww.

I call them Barber Shirts for lack of a proper name.I like the shorts too, I come from a COLD COLD -35 Wyoming in January to extreamly HOT Panama. I can't get aclimated to the heat fast enough. I'm always amazed that the locals wear long pants and boots when I'm burning up in shorts and sandels!