The Three Most Glaring Mistakes We Made Moving Overseas
Buenas tardes from Panama,
In our brief overseas experiences during the past couple of months, we noticed three glaring mistakes we made when moving overseas. Just a bit more thought into these areas would have made our move much easier.
Mistake #1: Not buying a vehicle.
One of the many reasons we chose to live in downtown Boquete was to be within walking distance of any conveniences that were offered to us.
Unless you’re a person who is comfortable with hailing a taxi or taking a bus, a vehicle is a must-have when moving to another country.
Don’t get me wrong, buses and taxis here are cheap. If you like dealing with a varying amount of risk or unfamiliarity, depending on where and when you go, riding a crowded bus with strangers that makes many stops or getting into a taxi where you’re not really in control of where you may end up, is probably something that wouldn’t bother you.
In our case, we weren’t brought up this way. In our travels, we’ve found that taking buses and taxis is not for us. It’s a decision you’ll have to consider on your own. Of course, everyone is different.
We’ve encountered early darkness, inclement weather and the uncomfortable feeling of having three people being squeezed into a seat that has room for only two people. Also, it has taken much more time and planning to do anything and our dogs weren’t able to travel with us.
Most buses here have smaller seats made for school-bus children. The majority of taxis are smaller-sized vehicles due to fuel-efficiency considerations and the very narrow streets here in town. In both cases, a person of my size has nowhere to put his legs or needs to turn his shoulders and move over to accommodate a passenger that really shouldn’t be there.
It’s made us realize that freedom or avoiding that trapped feeling, would be much better served with a vehicle of our own. It would allow us to travel when and where we want, in much less time with less hassle and we would be happier taking our dogs along for the ride.
Mistake #2: Not reducing the amount of personal belongings that we shipped here.
We have had many self-induced difficulties in Panama simply because we brought far too much stuff with us in our move overseas. Not only was our freight sent to the wrong country and therefore was delayed, we had trouble locating the cargo terminal, clearing customs and then had to pay exorbitant taxes on our used goods.
Our advice is to bring as little as possible with you and save enough money beforehand to purchase the things you actually need when you get to your destination.
Mistake #3: Not learning the native language.
Above all, we needed to learn the language of the culture, or at least a good portion of it, to reduce the number of everyday situations where we didn’t know how to communicate with locals and understand what was going on. Our cell phone translators helped a lot however there were times when there was no internet signal leaving us with that lost feeling.
Until next time…buenas tardes from Panama, Don
Update from Panama 