On the Dark Side......

Prostitution is apparently legal in Panama, but it's kept very quiet.  While walking around last night on the hunt for a place to eat, we noticed some big signs that led to little hole in the wall store fronts under other businesses.  Nothing but the sign was visable from the streets.  Once we got home we looked up one of these businesses called Moulin Rouge Girls but the website had expired.  These place seem to be clubs where men can be entertained and then should they choose, take a girl back to their hotel room. I did find a few comments indicating that these girls extract about $400 to $500 from their customers. And according to the internet there are massage parlors here that also offer some "benefits" that one might call a "happy ending."

While on the subject of "romance" as men like to call it, Panama also has some other features we've not seen elsewhere.  There are these sort of drive in hotels here where one can go for some rent by the hour romance.  Picutre if you will a tacky, heart sign indicating the way to a driveway.  After a long driveway there is a selection of open garages that look resemble an automatic car wash in the US.  A car can drive into one of these garages and put their money into the slots ($15 for 2 hours, $5 for additonal hour) and rent a hotel room for 2 to 3 hours.  There is no embarrasing hotel lobby to walk into and no way your "spouse" can see your car in the parking lot.  A friend once made a point about these "no tell motels."  Let's suppose you have 5 kids and things are crazy at home and there's no time for mom and dad to have a little alone time for romance.  So why not drive down the road to one of these hotels and get a room for a few hours to have some fun, before going back to the chaos of family life.  By the way the one we drove into just to see what it was, there were two sides of these garages. Each side had about 25 open garages and signs on the inside wall with prices.  On one side the price was $20 for 2 hours and $5 for an extra hour, on the other it was only $15 for the first 2 hours.  We have no idea what the difference was, maybe less on the inside?  This one is called "Los Arbolitos" and we'd pass it all the time and one day Clyde said lets drive in and see what this is.

Spanish school is going well this week as we try to grab all that we can out of our instructors since this is our last week there.  After class we studied our verb conjugations for hours, hoping that they'll eventually sink in. 

We stopped by an El Rey Supermarket to pay our $17.00 electric bill. There were about 20 people in line at the pay station.   As we waited Clyde asked me to walk up and see if there was a special window for pensionados and jubilados.  I went to look and there was a window with no one in line with a sign indicating it was for pensionados. Clyde walked to that window, paid the bill and we were out of there while the others waited in the long line.  It was nice but made us feel a bit guilty too, since many on the long line were older than us.  We're realizing that outside the US there is much more respect given to the elderly.  Even in the Spanish language there are words used to indicate "respect" towards an older person. 

Well I've got to get ready and get to school.  So all you chicos and chicas have a wonderful day and we'll see where our trails take us today.