Panama diary entry 1: I nearly got robbed in Panama.

Hi guys, I'm finally back from Panama and well, I nearly got robbed there. Since that was the incident that stood out from this trip, I may as well start with it. Someone tried to rob me in the street whilst I was in Panama and since I've been telling this story to my friends here in the UK - allow me to use the Q&A format here to structure it using their questions. 

Q: So in a nutshell, what happened? Were you robbed? 

A: I was shooting a video on Avienda Peru in the Calidonia neighbourhood of Panama City for Instagram when a man came running at me with a big knife shouting abuse. I was lucky that he was shouting abuse because it alerted me to the fact that he was armed. I speak Spanish very well, so I understood that he said something along the lines of "give me everything or I will cut you up into little pieces." That's the sanitized version without the swearing. So it was more like "**** you ****, you piece of ****, give me everything or I will ****ing cut you up into little pieces." He was about four or five meters away from me when I noticed him and I decided to run for my life. I dashed across the road and continued running down the other side of the road. I had never run so fast in my life before and didn't know I could run at that speed for that long - adrenaline is a powerful drug. At that point, I was worried that I might be chased by a group of men down that road as I think there were some men standing behind him when he approached me. They may have been total strangers who just happened to have been there or they may have been his friends - either way, I wasn't prepared to take my chances with them. I got to the main street at Avienda Central España and kept running until I spotted two policemen, that was when I finally stopped and asked them for help. I remember breathing so hard, I could barely speak.

Q: Did that man with the knife chase you? Did anyone else chase you? 

A: I could see from my peripheral vision as I was crossing the road that he did follow me across the road - I did check if there was traffic, I wasn't going to let myself get hit by a car whilst running away. After that I just focused on looking ahead as I wasn't going to trip over something and allow him to get to me. That was why I just kept running and didn't stop to look back until I found the two policemen on Avienda Central España. The adrenaline kicked in and I ran and ran.

Q: What did the policemen do? Did they help you? 

A: At least I felt safer with them but good grief, they weren't interested in trying to catch the guy who tried to rob me. For them it was like, here we go again, another dumb tourist getting into trouble in our city. They literally scolded me for being foolish, for wandering around on my own and wandering down a side street instead of sticking to the main street which was a lot more crowded. They also told me to use taxis if I didn't know where I was going. They then asked me where I was going and sent me on my way with directions - there was no attempt to try to catch the guy who tried to attack me. 

Q: What? What the hell are the police for if they don't catch criminals? 

A: Here's the harsh reality of the situation: the police in Panama are paid very little, thus the police are hardly motivated to put their own lives at risk if there's a dangerous criminal out there - the policemen were probably thinking, what if he attacks me? I'm not paid enough to deal with such situations. If I get injured, how am I supposed to support my family if I lose my job? If I get killed, who is going to take care of my family? In fact in many poor countries, the police are so poorly paid that they usually resort to taking bribes in order to make ends meet. So if a policeman arrests you for speeding or any other kind of traffic offence, they would expect you to pay a 'fine' on the spot and the whole thing will go away, this happened to us in Indonesia. The police stopped us and made up some excuse, we had to then pay them a 'fine' or go back with them to the police station. So if you live in a country where the police actually do their job properly and protect the people from the criminals, then don't ever take that for granted - the poor folks in Panama just don't have that luxury. 

Q: Were you scared at that time? 

A: Firstly, I don't think I had the time to be scared. When you're in such a situation, you just want to stay alive. If you simply give in to fear or if you're paralyzed by fear, then you will become a victim in this situation. It would be untrue to say that I didn't feel scared, of course I felt scared but nonetheless, I also had the presence of mind to quickly evaluate what my options are and I picked the right option. Look, I have been through enough shit in my life to learn an important lesson: giving in to fear and crying does absolutely nothing to solve your problems. That's the kind of response that I would expect from a helpless child, like if a child felt scared then s/he would cry but would that solve anything? Hell no. Of course not. I grew up in a poor family where I learnt from an early age that crying wouldn't solve any of my problems, nobody cared when I cried so then what's the point in crying? I see some parents who give in to emotional blackmail when their children cry and I think that's terrible parenting because these kids will never be able to cope in a stressful situation if they are conditioned to cry at the first sign of stress. A loving parent will react kindly when these kids cry, but when faced with a very angry man with waving a huge knife in Panama, crying or giving in to fear will not help you in that situation. I didn't have a choice, so it's not like I'm claiming to be brave - it was just my desire to survive that situation that got me through it. I just did not want to die that day, not that way, so I did whatever I had to do to survive and stay alive. 

Q: Do you consider yourself brave? 

A: No, I consider myself rational. I remained calm in a very stressful situation and considered what my options were and was able to make a rational decision after running through the different options in my head. Someone who was brave might have challenged the armed man to a fight and tried to take him on, whilst you might consider a response like that very brave, I would consider it foolhardy to take on an armed man in fight when you don't have a weapon and hence you would start the fight at a massive disadvantage. So being brave is simply not feeling fear in the face of danger, you need to be rational in order to figure how you're going to get out of that difficult situation. Thus I am rational, rather than brave. 

Q: Why didn't you just give him everything? It's just money. Your life is worth more than your iPhone. 

A: The thing is I didn't trust him to be reasonable, it wasn't a business transaction like, "give me your phone and wallet and in exchange, I will not hurt you." There was no negotiating, there was nothing would have guaranteed that he wouldn't still try to stab me a few times and leave me to bleed out at the side of the road - that would be a horrible way to die as you could bleed to death in literally minutes if he had severed a main artery or two. Look if he had a gun, then I probably wouldn,'t have ran as he could've shot me from a distance but since he had a knife, he couldn't hurt me - well, not unless he threw the knife at me but then he would lose his weapon. If he threw it at me and missed, then I could pick it up and then attack him. There were no good options in such a situation so I had to make a snap decision at that moment and fortunately for me, it turned out to be the right one given that I could run surprisingly fast and I did manage to find two policemen not too far away. That was the conclusion I arrived at in a split second, whilst I didn't have the time to analyze it in quite as much detail as I have done here, I still stand by my original decision to run away so it was the definitely right decision and I got the best possible outcome in that situation - I could see that intense hatred in his face. 

Q: Were there people around? Did anyone help you? 

A: Yes there were many people around, but no one helped me. Such is Panama for you. But if you saw a tourist being robbed at knife point, ask yourself this: would you step in and try to assist the tourist in this situation or just run away? 

Q: What time was this? 

A: It was about 11:30 am in the morning - literally daylight robbery. Late morning on a Sunday on a crowded street.

Q: You said he shouted at you angrily, did you do something that made him angry? 

A: There is 'poverty porn' that's when the media exploits the plight of the poor to try to get the attention of viewers. In the age of social media, that's when Instagrammers like me go to poor neighbourhoods in Panama to film "how the real people live" and gawk at their horrible living conditions in order to get more followers and likes. I am hardly the only person doing it on social media, there are a number of Youtubers like Indigo Traveler and Drew Binsky do that in a most condescending way. Oh I can just imagine them going "look at how the children in the slums live - they don't even have running water or electricity here but the smiles on their faces are so genuine when they are playing. I feel like they are teaching us all a valuable lesson that the best things in life are free. These children here don't need the latest iPhones, laptops or expensive toys, as long as they have each other and that's all that matters. Do we own our possessions or do they own us?" I am equally guilty of that, when I was on my way to Panama Viejo, my bus passed through a very poor neighbourhood so I took my phone out and filmed from the safety of the bus to depict how the real people in Panama lived in abject poverty - you can see that short video here. The video opens with a man sweeping his front yard whilst talking to a friend, all I wanted to do was to share with my followers some of the sights I had witnessed in Panama. Certainly, I meant no disrespect to the people in the video but did I obtain their consent before filming them? No, I was in the bus, I couldn't speak to them but I didn't ask them - these folks appeared in my video without giving me consent and you could argue that this was disrespectful of me to share that video online in my quest to get more likes and followers.

But that man didn't challenge me, "excuse me don't you think it is unethical of you to use the poverty of these folks on Avienda Peru to get more attention on social media? Why are you filming here and who is this content for? Can you justify this kind of content and the way you're telling the world that Panama is a poor country? How do you think the locals would feel about your Instagram content?" No, it was just a string of abuse and a threat to cut me into little pieces with his massive knife. It might take a long time to reason with me and make me see your point of your but you can scare me in a second by threatening to kill me. Maybe he was offended by the fact that I was a tourist filming in his neighbourhood but he wasn't eloquent and articulate enough to challenge me thus he threatened me with a huge knife instead. Heck if he was intelligent and educated enough to speak to me reasonably about the topic, then he wouldn't be living in such a depressing and poor neighbourhood. These uneducated, working class people do experience feelings like anger, resentment and jealousy when they see a rich foreigner taking selfies and videos in their neighbourhood, but they simply don't have the social skills to deal with this kind of situation. Then again, I should have been a lot more aware of my surroundings and not have been walking around like that with my phone in my hand - in terms of being aware of my surroundings that was a big fail on my part. I honestly don't think Avienda Peru is that unsafe, it's just that I really shouldn't have been filming there like that. That was my fault and my mistake - I have learnt my lesson now and I'm going to be a lot more careful in the future. Maybe I had caused grave offence, or maybe he was just looking to rob someone. 

Q: What were you doing on Avienda Peru? 

A: There's this big shopping street called Avienda Central España which I have walked down a few times, it is in a poor neighbourhood called Calidonia but I never felt unsafe there because of the presence of the police and security guards. Every shop there would have a team of security guards as labour is very cheap in a place like Panama, so you are never more than a few meters away from a man in a uniform - be it in the form of the police, the military or private security. Now whether or not they would help you if you got attacked is another matter altogether but their mere presence in such large numbers gave me a false sense of security. This is where the ordinary local folks shop if they wanted to buy something like a pair of shoes - there are some luxury malls in Panama like the Soho mall and Multiplaza mall which are full of exclusive designer boutiques, but the ordinary folks of Panama could never afford to shop there if a pair of shoes costs the equivalent of a year's salary for them there. Instead, they would go to the shops on Avienda Central España to find a bargain - I actually find those shops on Avienda Central España a lot more fascinating than the luxury malls. A part of me wants to see where the real people live, where they shop and immerse myself in the local culture. I was on my way to Casco Viejo from Avienda Central España when I decided to walk down Avienda Peru instead of going down the main street again given that I had already walked down Avienda Central España before so I took a different route. So I wasn't deliberately trying to find very poor people or film extreme poverty, I was just trying to explore a different part of the city. 

Q: Is Panama really that poor and dangerous? 

A: No actually, there is a small elite ruling class: Panama has two main sources of income: all ships passing through the canal has to pay hefty fees and there are some people working with the canal who are earning millions. It is also a major offshore financial center so some people working in banking are earning a lot of money as well. The skyline of Panama is impressive with plenty of skyscrapers on the waterfront, all boasting to have a great view of the ocean. However, this wealth is not evenly shared - Panama is a shockingly unequal country where a small number of the elites are richer than folks in places like Germany, Japan, Canada and Australia whilst majority live in abject poverty. A more left-wing approach to this situation would be to tax the rich and share the wealth to alleviate poverty in the country, but the politicians in Panama are controlled by the rich who would gladly make generous contributions to their political campaigns and in return the politicians make sure that the rich are never pursued for tax - it is a tax haven: there is no income tax, capital gains tax, corporate tax, estate taxes and the one of the few taxes there is a sales tax (like GST/VAT) but ironically, both the rich and the poor pay that equally. I bought a pair of sandals from Avienda Central España and I had to pay sales tax on it. So despite the fact that there's clearly a lot of wealth in the country, it is concentrated in the hands of the elite and there is zero effort on the part of the government to try to redistribute at least some of it to help the poor. This fuels anger and resentment against the rich - there is a very deep divide between the 'haves' and the 'have not's in a place like Panama and so some will take matters into their own hands by literally robbing the rich in the street. 

Q: Is the problem inequality then if it is such an unequal country?

A: If you were in a country where everyone was very poor, then crime rates would be lower as there's no point trying to rob a man in the street as he would have very little or no money. But if you live in a place like Panama, then it's not hard to find someone with money if you are trying to make a quick buck through a robbery. Other places with very high crime rates like Brazil and South Africa are also very unequal in this aspect as well. Not only does this inequality fuel crime, it also fuels police corruption so criminals know that they can bribe the police to look the other way if they do get caught - the way the rich keep themselves safe in such unequal countries is by spending a lot of money on private security to protect themselves from the threat of crimes like robbery. Thus the most dangerous countries are not the poorest ones, but the most unequal ones. I was naive as to how much danger I had placed myself in by walking down that street all by myself. I really should have known better. If you live in a country where you can feel safe walking down the street, never take that for granted, as many things have had to be put into place in order to create that safe and secure environment. 

Q: Does this experience give you a fresh perspective on the safe environment in Singapore you grew up with? 

A: Singapore is so safe, this kind of violent crime would never happen in Singapore. This is for two key reasons: firstly, the bottom 20% in Singapore may be relatively poor compared to the top 20% in Singapore, but they are not living in abject poverty. Public services in Singapore are excellent, things just work - let me give you a simple example. On Avienda Central España, the drains are choked with rubbish, they are not regularly cleaned so once it starts raining, it floods very quickly. I witnessed just that and captured it on video which you can see here. Contrast that to Singapore where the government actually employs people to maintain the drainage system, so that it is far less likely to flood when downpours do happen. That's just one aspect of life in Panama that sucks if you're poor: take healthcare for example, Singapore's public healthcare system takes care of the poor whilst Panama's system is limited - the rich go to the fancy private hospitals and pay a lot for the best treatment money can buy whilst the poor are left to die in overcrowded, underfunded public hospitals. It is death by a thousand paper cuts on a daily basis in Panama if you're poor because the government is corrupt and uninterested in helping the poor. Whilst I know there is no welfare state in Singapore and the situation is not perfect, you can't deny the fact that the bottom 20% in Singapore are still better off than in most countries around the world with perhaps the exception of Scandinavia. Poor Singaporeans still always send their kids to school and make them study hard because they actually have hope in the system - they still believe their kids will have a brighter future and attain social mobility. Let's not take that hope for granted because in many other parts of the world, poor people don't share that same optimism in their children's future. So credit where credit is due, well done Singapore. 

Q: What about the bottom 20% in the UK then? How does that compare? 

A: The situation in the UK is better than Panama but worse than Singapore. The UK has a very different model - the British government gives generous welfare benefits to the bottom 20% from free housing to unemployment benefits to free school meals to free healthcare whilst in Singapore, yes the bottom 20% get some help but far less help whilst in Panama, the poor get virtually nothing and still have to pay sales tax when they consume. The British model doesn't work as well as the Singaporean model because it has created a culture of dependency where the bottom 20% simply give up on trying to better themselves because they know that the government will never let them starve regardless of their lack of effort to help themselves. Whilst in Singapore, they get so little help that they know that they cannot give up trying and the fact that they are doing okay is mostly down to their own efforts and somehow, the system in Singapore has convinced them to try harder. In Panama the bottom 20% get virtually no help, they don't even bother trying because they know that it is impossible to succeed without having the government on your side, you're doomed from the start as all the odds are stacked against you if you were born into a poor working class family in Panama. So the challenge is getting the balance right: help the bottom 20% too much and you create a culture of dependency like in the UK, help them too little (or not at all) and you make it impossible for them to succeed like in Panama. Whilst a lot of people may argue that the state in Singapore is extremely rich and can spend more money helping the poor, it is evident that a balance needs to be struck between helping too much and too little - I'm not claiming that the Singaporean approach is perfect or correct, all I am saying is that this Singaporean model has certainly produced much better results than in the UK and in Panama. 

Q: Would this experience deter you from traveling in the future to such unsafe places? 

A: Well, I would be a total idiot not to have learnt my lesson from this episode! In the future, I would avoid such areas and more to the point - this kind of poverty porn, this kind of voyeurism to see how the poor people live will be off the menu. 

Q: Why do you want to look at how poor people live? What kind of morbid curiousity is this?

A: Ironically, the Panamanians have marketed this kind of rustic, tribal poverty to the tourists for years - you can visit the San Blas islands and see how the local Guna people live, experiencing their tribal traditions. These people who live on the San Blas are very poor and make a living exploiting the desire of the tourists to see something rustic, exotic and tribal; hence the tourists pay a high price for such access and they would put on various shows for them by demonstrating all their traditional lifestyles from weaving basket out of reeds, singing and dancing whilst wearing their colourful Guna costumes and preparing traditional local dishes for the tourists. Once the tourists leave, these 'tribal people' put on their modern clothes, take out their iPhones and log onto social media - for them, it's a living, it's just a way to earn money by performing for the tourists like that. I am sure at some level, the tourists know that they're watching a show, a performance that is staged for the tourists and they're paying for that service; but the same way you suspend your disbelief when you go to the theatre or cinema, these tourists are happy to just go along with it when seeing the Guna people perform their traditional rituals for them on the San Blas islands. Needless to say, the Guna people have full control over this kind of interaction: the tourists pay a hefty fee to them to be a part of a guided tour to watch these performances and the Guna people certainly profit from it. The Guna people can earn far more this way through this kind of tourism compared to their more traditional farming and fishing activities practiced on the San Blas islands. There's nothing wrong with tourists being curious about how such people live when visiting Panama, but you have to gain access on their terms by participating in a tour which you pay for, rather than just wander to an area where the poor people live.

Okay, that's it from me on this topic. I'm fine now, I'm back home in London, wiser for the experience. I have spoken to my friends from places like Chile, Mexico and Panama and they all told me the same thing: I should have never put myself in that situation in the first place so before you lecture me about being reckless, careless or foolish, rest assured that I have already been scolded many times already. If you want to let me know that you do care, just say something like, "I'm glad you're alright. I don't want anything bad to happen to you." I have many more stories to share from Panama, but I just had to get this one out of the way first. Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.