sloopskipper - I read what you had to say about Panama City. I don't remember the drivers being bad at all, compared, say, to the ones in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Drivers stopped at red lights, for instance, even those on motorcycles. In Chiang Mai, motorcycle drivers consider themselves exempt. The police don't ticket, and if they do, they'll take a bribe of about $3.

I'm mainly interested in a place to live a sort of boring day to day life, where I can get cable, see movies in English, and a fair number of people speak English. I would only expect to be there about half of the year, and travle the rest of the time, so the lack of places to go wouldn't bother me. I am concerned about costs, though.

With the drivers, I guess it is all a matter of perception (but even the cars, buses, trucks, AND motorcycles here often don't stop at traffic lights, and very rarely use signals). I have not been in Thailand but I find them much worse here than NYC, Washington, San Juan, Cartagena, Lima, Amsterdam, or Paris, and the police here don't seem to ticket for ANYTHING! They appear to only watch the World go by.

But, a boring place were you can cable TV and watch movies? It's made to order, jaja.

However, " . . .and English is widely spoken"? To me that is an urban myth spread by those who want to sell you real estate. Although, there is an English speaking ex-pat population.

Seriously, with a real estate boom (perhaps about to burst?), housing costs are rising rapidly, and my perception is that overall cost-of-living is not so low, all things considered. I have read from reputable sources that apartment costs here are now higher than Miami.

I bought my 12 YO apartment for $93K in July, 2006. It was appraised a few weeks ago for 116.5, but who knows what it might really sell for? I see similar, but smaller places that they ASK a lot more for, in real estate ads. Prices for the new places are going through the roof.

If memory serves, I read in La Prensa that the basic grocery basket for a family of 4 (much rice, beans and chicken, I would imagine) was recently more than $220, and increasing by 12% per year???? Don't hold me to those figures. I would think that would probably be cheap compared to the USA, but I have not been there for more than 5 years.

I love the weather where "I" live, on the Pacific. It was 76 this morning, and now at 11AM is 83F with a nice breeze from the sea. I almost never need A/C, but is hotter in the rest of PC.

It IS a good launch point for travel in Latin America.

The time I spent in Panama followed five months in the rest of Central America. At the time, there were two internet cafes in all of Managua, Nicaragua, my selection of English language books was limited in most countries, and the number of English-speaking people that I met was radically smaller than the number I met in Panama.

One of the lads i employ has a daughter in Zim` he was booted out of the country for working illegally and his ex stayed there, so now he cant see his baby and she (ex) aint bothered.
He tells me that any white man there is extremely rich or v. stupid as it can go off against non nationals quite easily any day. they all have to barracade themselves in at night, and even then it isnt that safe against a determined mob, and you just know in the back of your mind that phoning the police for help wont help.

I'm not sure what Peter C means ... the country is on the verge of collapse, inflation is massive, and foreigners just have their farms taken away from them whilst a meglamaniac runs the country. Although I've never been there, from what I've seen on the news and in other forums it would rank very very high on my list of places not to go

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There are plenty of English spekers if you want to hang out with a bunch of other gringos. Also many gringo yahoo chat groups, and panama-guide is a good source of English language news.

Like many expats, my interest in retiring in a foreign country has mostly to do with economics and wanting a certain level of comfort.