Visiting Panama -- need advice

Hi FutureExpat, welcome on board.

I hope other members will advice you on some places very soon.

I wish you good luck,
Christine

Bien en el viaje sin duda podrán pasar por muchos lugares interesantes, santiago de veraguas, chorrera, penonome, el valle de antón.
Saludos....

@ panamavisas: once again, please post solely in English whilst in the English forum cheers

PANAMAVISAS is saying that there are many interesting places such as Santiago de Veraguas, Chorrea, Penenome, & El Valle de Anton.  Although those places are interesting for a day or 2, I wouldn't send a non Spanish speaker there to live.  Grocery shopping alone would become painful and tedious. 
Las Tablas is beautiful, warm and has lovely simple people living there who get all excited once a year for Carnival.  It's quiet with relatively low crime compared to the above mentioned towns that are actually trucker/bus rest stops. 
David would be a better choice for warmth, ease of finding home goods & repair, groceries, an airport, and hospitals to choose.  You'll also find a larger community of ex-pats and English speakers.  Good luck.
P.S.  Keep in mind that all of Panama is a wet place to live-only some places are more wet than others. Dec.-Feb. is the dry season.

Thanks, elias!

Hello,
I am very much interested in "living in Panama", so I am looking forward to reading your experiences  of your visit to Las Tablas or David.  Are you still interested in moving to Panama?

Kind regards
Yolanda

I like David, I live and work here. It is close to beach and mountains, not far from Costa Rica and 3.5 hours from bocas..
i would recommend spending a few weeks here walk around and check it out, take a look at an excellent blog chiriquichatter.net and the yahoo group gringos in david..

also there are some places to stay for a few week stay i recommend to friends, bambu hostel bambuhostel.com (bambu has a pool a big plus in the heat)  and also purple house hostel and chambres de ville chambresdeville.com, also head up to rain forrest and stay at the lost and found jungle lodge, about an hour outside of town are amazing hot springs called caldera hot springs, there is a lot more but if you are in the area you will figure it out..

There is quite a large community of expats in Chiriqui (Boquete, David) and also instead of Las Tablas give Pedasí a try IŽve heard there are a lot of expats in there, youŽll find in Pedasí some the most beautiful beaches of Panama, so its warm. Boquete is the other way around it has a different temperature quite nice actually, 70F is the lowest it goes.

We moved to Panama with hopes of it becoming our new home.  After 6 months we realized it was not for us, for many reasons.

Word of caution:  AVOID PURCHASING A HOME UNTIL AFTER LIVING THERE LONG ENOUGH TO REALLY EXPERIENCE WHAT IT IS LIKE TO LIVE IN PANAMA.

Always good advice, drhank. That's why we plan to rent for months before we even consider buying.

Pick another country....its a nightmare here. No matter where u choose its gonna b a nightmare.

Good luck

invader, don't know what your beef is with Panama. Perhaps it's your nightmare but someone else's dream. . . in any case, whatever the pros and cons of any particular location are, it only makes sense to at least visit before you decide to pull up stakes and move there.

I'm still planning to move to Panama. I've visited, and I plan to rent for an extended period of time. That's just common sense.