Panama City fragments
What i like about Panama City is that it's like a little baby version of the cities in China. It has all those dreary shopping malls and highrises that i have no interest in visiting, and it also has the tenements and local street markets where the working class people live. But when you climb the tallest mountain in the city, it only takes 15 minutes, and then you look around, and you see the edge of the city - it's not like it goes on for a hundred kilometers in each direction, with tens of millions of people bustling through it. It feels quaint and relaxing, while still having some busy markets and - sadly - all too many internal combustion vehicles clogging up the streets.
The pastries remind me a lot of Chinese buns. Soft, milky, a little bit sweet, and wonderfully cheap. Good news is the coffee is much better than China, and much cheaper. There is even a little Chinatown filled with discount stores selling junk, a spotlessly clean wet market, and - yes - a hole in the wall where i could get a plate of rice, noodles, vegetables and char siu for $5. I found myself really put on the spot trying to order Chinese food in Spanish... I asked if they spoke Putonghua and surprisingly they did, so i placed my order in Chinese. The fact i was able to communicate in bodgy Canto-accented Mandarin made the place even more reminiscent of my time in Shenzhen, and specifically those trips across the border to pre-NSL Hong Kong, where there was still some colonial influence and Cantonese dominance.
Because climbing that Cerro Ancón, it gave me the Hong Kong feeling too. Some of the websites advised to take a taxi there because it's in a dangerous neighborhood, but it's not really. It is beside a poor part of town. The urban planning here is for shit - they slashed freeways across the city and then forgot to put pedestrian crossings to link it up, which isolates neighborhoods and turns them into ghettos. Worst is the airport connections, which don't have public transport running directly to them, despite the fact there is a very modern metro system and perfectly good buses running through town. I guess the rich people just take Uber everywhere. I refuse. But, eh, i kept my wits about me and followed my offline map suggestions to walk up from the street markets that were just up the road from my hotel to the trail head. The neighborhood was poor, for sure, but it didn't feel dangerous, not in the daytime anyway. Perhaps for tourists waving around iPhones and expensive DSLRs? And climbing that mountain, jungle all around me, oppressive humidity steaming up my glasses and causing me to sweat all over the place... It brought back memories of those hikes in Guangdong, up the endless stairs, past now-abandoned guard huts, looking out at modern highrises through the dense foliage.
The Pirate History Podcast was in my mind too, where i learned about the history of Panama City, specifically in the context of the raids (and failed raids) that English pirates made on the Spanish colony. I didn't yet visit the ruins of the old old city, burned to the ground by Henry Morgan's gang of thugs, but standing on Cerro Ancón looking at the new old city, i could picture myself a spotter for another pirate raid. You can imagine just how challenging it would be to travel here as a pirate, with the heat, humidity and fog. Without roads carving up the landscape, the jungle would be practically impenetrable.
Walking down to the old town, it's less attractive from the ground level. A lot of work is being done to clean it up and make it look pretty much identical to every old town in Europe. Expensive accommodations, lots of tourists in European cars being driven past on tours, valet parking, restaurants that charge at least as much as any restaurant in the US, and three or four times as much as the restaurants just a few streets over in Chinatown and the less gentrified areas. It will be sad when that whole section looks exactly the same as Venice, Vienna, Florence, take your fucking pick. I do like cobbledy roads and cute little plazas with coffee shops on them, but when they have been constructed specifically to cater more to wealthy tourists than to the poor locals who used to live in the area, it feels kinda fake to me.
Fortunately you only need to walk a bit out of the old town to get into a more laid-back neighborhood. It felt like coming home, walking around with street vendors all over the place, bananas, pineapples, counterfeit sneakers, useless phone accessories and so on. Towns feel so alive when there are hawkers shouting out their prices and special deals, when everyone is walking around on foot, and cars beep and beep to try get through, but nobody gives a fuck. When commerce and residential areas are side-by-side on the streets, pedestrian-first, it feels so much more natural to me than these weirdly artificial neighborhoods that are all condos and parking garages, or just a big air-conditioned shopping mall, or whatever.
I did go to an air-conditioned shopping mall, though. I went partly just to see how "the other side" lives, but also because i had an idea to buy a hammock while i was in the city in case they are hard to find in more rural areas. (I might end up giving away my tent or putting it in storage, since i suspect i won't be camping much down here, but if i do then overnighting in a hammock is probably a more practical way to sleep in the jungle.) The mall was awful. Exactly the same as every other mall everywhere else in the world. Everyone dressed in dark blue jeans and crisp collared shirts, the uniform of upper middle class mediocrity. Prices exactly the same as the US, in fact a bit more expensive presumably due to the shipping. Horrid.
I found it more chill around a strange little bay next to the football stadium where the tide had gone out and a dozen fishing boats were just sitting there beached on the mud. Fishermen, who perhaps live on their boats, were hanging out on deck and sploshing through the mud to shore. There are a couple of restaurants along there that sell "overpriced" beer at 2 bucks a bottle. It was nice sitting there for a bit, looking out to sea, sipping my Corona poured into a styrofoam cup of ice.
Yesterday evening i went to a local bar near my hotel where beer was a more reasonable $1.25. I ate a ceviche and some patacones, which as mentioned in my previous food post, is another name for tostones or fried plantain. I ended up having 3 beers and still spent less than $10 before tip. All the servers were pretty women dressed up in tight clothes.
I am going to find it hard to deal with the genderedness of the language here. Everyone reads me as male because i am tall and don't shave my legs or armpits and don't have even a hint of a boob any more after losing weight on the road. It's kinda nice to be called "amor" by attractive servers, but when the dude at the next table over calls me "amigo", ugh.
Over in the rich people's shopping mall i did see a guy wearing a pride t-shirt, though, with the trans flag colors too, so even if the language is shoving the gender binary in your face the whole time at least there is some awareness in the community that it doesn't have to be that way.
I suppose, just like in the US, it does serve me well to be seen as male at first glance, since it presumably makes me less of a target.
I feel like i didn't really have enough time to experience Panama City. Granted, it is a very small city, but only having a day - a Saturday at that - feels like i didn't get to really understand the ebb and flow and patterns of the people. This morning i took public transport to the local/domestic airport, and now i am stuck here 2 hours before departure with nothing open and only a very overpriced coffee shop for food. Not sure if that's a Sunday thing or if this is just a desolate area. This did used to be a US military base. It's that same odd feeling i got in China in neighborhoods that seemed repurposed or reserved for some government-related thing or another, with fences and barriers around the place, mysteriously and without explanation blocking entry to certain routes. But it could also be that this is Sunday morning and that's just how it is.
I don't like that all the people who also got here way too early are speaking English. I am really worried when i get to Bocas it is going to be a massive tourist trap. I booked the flight there because it's a place where cruisers park their sailboats for the hurricane season, and it might be a good spot to find a berth on a boat heading into the Caribbean. But it didn't occur to me that the Caribbean coast of the Spanish Main is generally more English-speaking, and that a region whose income is primarily derived from tourism might be exactly the sort of place that up until now i have completely avoided in my travels. You know, never went to Thailand, never went to Bali, never went to Mallorca, etc etc. I don't like the idea of hanging out with a bunch of Americans or Europeans, speaking English, or German, or whatever, being waited on by locals who are trying to extract a meager fee for every little thing.
So, we'll see. I do want to sit on the beach drinking out of a coconut for a while, but i also want to experience some local music, local food and local people. And not pay some tour guide to show me a curated version of it. Otherwise what's the point of travel? I want to feel like i am taking part in the community where i stay, not propping up the economy, if that makes sense.
I suppose i should go see if i need to check my bag. My credit card didn't work to book direct, so i had to go through Kiwi, and their idea of the checked baggage costs didn't match the one on the Air Panama site so even though i did web check-in i don't know what the deal is with checking my duffle. I think i would prefer to take a bus if/when i come back in the other direction.
...and now i am standing in line. Hooray. I might be forced to buy an overpriced empanada when i make it through this. I think i still have a couple of dollars in my wallet. Oh, air travel, how i didn't miss you. Time to go take a massive shit on my low carbon lifestyle.
The pastries remind me a lot of Chinese buns. Soft, milky, a little bit sweet, and wonderfully cheap. Good news is the coffee is much better than China, and much cheaper. There is even a little Chinatown filled with discount stores selling junk, a spotlessly clean wet market, and - yes - a hole in the wall where i could get a plate of rice, noodles, vegetables and char siu for $5. I found myself really put on the spot trying to order Chinese food in Spanish... I asked if they spoke Putonghua and surprisingly they did, so i placed my order in Chinese. The fact i was able to communicate in bodgy Canto-accented Mandarin made the place even more reminiscent of my time in Shenzhen, and specifically those trips across the border to pre-NSL Hong Kong, where there was still some colonial influence and Cantonese dominance.
Because climbing that Cerro Ancón, it gave me the Hong Kong feeling too. Some of the websites advised to take a taxi there because it's in a dangerous neighborhood, but it's not really. It is beside a poor part of town. The urban planning here is for shit - they slashed freeways across the city and then forgot to put pedestrian crossings to link it up, which isolates neighborhoods and turns them into ghettos. Worst is the airport connections, which don't have public transport running directly to them, despite the fact there is a very modern metro system and perfectly good buses running through town. I guess the rich people just take Uber everywhere. I refuse. But, eh, i kept my wits about me and followed my offline map suggestions to walk up from the street markets that were just up the road from my hotel to the trail head. The neighborhood was poor, for sure, but it didn't feel dangerous, not in the daytime anyway. Perhaps for tourists waving around iPhones and expensive DSLRs? And climbing that mountain, jungle all around me, oppressive humidity steaming up my glasses and causing me to sweat all over the place... It brought back memories of those hikes in Guangdong, up the endless stairs, past now-abandoned guard huts, looking out at modern highrises through the dense foliage.
The Pirate History Podcast was in my mind too, where i learned about the history of Panama City, specifically in the context of the raids (and failed raids) that English pirates made on the Spanish colony. I didn't yet visit the ruins of the old old city, burned to the ground by Henry Morgan's gang of thugs, but standing on Cerro Ancón looking at the new old city, i could picture myself a spotter for another pirate raid. You can imagine just how challenging it would be to travel here as a pirate, with the heat, humidity and fog. Without roads carving up the landscape, the jungle would be practically impenetrable.
Walking down to the old town, it's less attractive from the ground level. A lot of work is being done to clean it up and make it look pretty much identical to every old town in Europe. Expensive accommodations, lots of tourists in European cars being driven past on tours, valet parking, restaurants that charge at least as much as any restaurant in the US, and three or four times as much as the restaurants just a few streets over in Chinatown and the less gentrified areas. It will be sad when that whole section looks exactly the same as Venice, Vienna, Florence, take your fucking pick. I do like cobbledy roads and cute little plazas with coffee shops on them, but when they have been constructed specifically to cater more to wealthy tourists than to the poor locals who used to live in the area, it feels kinda fake to me.
Fortunately you only need to walk a bit out of the old town to get into a more laid-back neighborhood. It felt like coming home, walking around with street vendors all over the place, bananas, pineapples, counterfeit sneakers, useless phone accessories and so on. Towns feel so alive when there are hawkers shouting out their prices and special deals, when everyone is walking around on foot, and cars beep and beep to try get through, but nobody gives a fuck. When commerce and residential areas are side-by-side on the streets, pedestrian-first, it feels so much more natural to me than these weirdly artificial neighborhoods that are all condos and parking garages, or just a big air-conditioned shopping mall, or whatever.
I did go to an air-conditioned shopping mall, though. I went partly just to see how "the other side" lives, but also because i had an idea to buy a hammock while i was in the city in case they are hard to find in more rural areas. (I might end up giving away my tent or putting it in storage, since i suspect i won't be camping much down here, but if i do then overnighting in a hammock is probably a more practical way to sleep in the jungle.) The mall was awful. Exactly the same as every other mall everywhere else in the world. Everyone dressed in dark blue jeans and crisp collared shirts, the uniform of upper middle class mediocrity. Prices exactly the same as the US, in fact a bit more expensive presumably due to the shipping. Horrid.
I found it more chill around a strange little bay next to the football stadium where the tide had gone out and a dozen fishing boats were just sitting there beached on the mud. Fishermen, who perhaps live on their boats, were hanging out on deck and sploshing through the mud to shore. There are a couple of restaurants along there that sell "overpriced" beer at 2 bucks a bottle. It was nice sitting there for a bit, looking out to sea, sipping my Corona poured into a styrofoam cup of ice.
Yesterday evening i went to a local bar near my hotel where beer was a more reasonable $1.25. I ate a ceviche and some patacones, which as mentioned in my previous food post, is another name for tostones or fried plantain. I ended up having 3 beers and still spent less than $10 before tip. All the servers were pretty women dressed up in tight clothes.
I am going to find it hard to deal with the genderedness of the language here. Everyone reads me as male because i am tall and don't shave my legs or armpits and don't have even a hint of a boob any more after losing weight on the road. It's kinda nice to be called "amor" by attractive servers, but when the dude at the next table over calls me "amigo", ugh.
Over in the rich people's shopping mall i did see a guy wearing a pride t-shirt, though, with the trans flag colors too, so even if the language is shoving the gender binary in your face the whole time at least there is some awareness in the community that it doesn't have to be that way.
I suppose, just like in the US, it does serve me well to be seen as male at first glance, since it presumably makes me less of a target.
I feel like i didn't really have enough time to experience Panama City. Granted, it is a very small city, but only having a day - a Saturday at that - feels like i didn't get to really understand the ebb and flow and patterns of the people. This morning i took public transport to the local/domestic airport, and now i am stuck here 2 hours before departure with nothing open and only a very overpriced coffee shop for food. Not sure if that's a Sunday thing or if this is just a desolate area. This did used to be a US military base. It's that same odd feeling i got in China in neighborhoods that seemed repurposed or reserved for some government-related thing or another, with fences and barriers around the place, mysteriously and without explanation blocking entry to certain routes. But it could also be that this is Sunday morning and that's just how it is.
I don't like that all the people who also got here way too early are speaking English. I am really worried when i get to Bocas it is going to be a massive tourist trap. I booked the flight there because it's a place where cruisers park their sailboats for the hurricane season, and it might be a good spot to find a berth on a boat heading into the Caribbean. But it didn't occur to me that the Caribbean coast of the Spanish Main is generally more English-speaking, and that a region whose income is primarily derived from tourism might be exactly the sort of place that up until now i have completely avoided in my travels. You know, never went to Thailand, never went to Bali, never went to Mallorca, etc etc. I don't like the idea of hanging out with a bunch of Americans or Europeans, speaking English, or German, or whatever, being waited on by locals who are trying to extract a meager fee for every little thing.
So, we'll see. I do want to sit on the beach drinking out of a coconut for a while, but i also want to experience some local music, local food and local people. And not pay some tour guide to show me a curated version of it. Otherwise what's the point of travel? I want to feel like i am taking part in the community where i stay, not propping up the economy, if that makes sense.
I suppose i should go see if i need to check my bag. My credit card didn't work to book direct, so i had to go through Kiwi, and their idea of the checked baggage costs didn't match the one on the Air Panama site so even though i did web check-in i don't know what the deal is with checking my duffle. I think i would prefer to take a bus if/when i come back in the other direction.
...and now i am standing in line. Hooray. I might be forced to buy an overpriced empanada when i make it through this. I think i still have a couple of dollars in my wallet. Oh, air travel, how i didn't miss you. Time to go take a massive shit on my low carbon lifestyle.