They Must Be Starving...
So on our way from Costa Rica to Buenos Aires, we had a layover in Panama.
Ah! Panama City...
If you've been to their airport then you know what I am about to talk about. I'll do my best to describe it.
The place is literally a mall. Yes, a mall! Wall to wall shops. Ranging from electronic goods, watches, clothes, booze (my personal favorite), toys, candy, books, Indian Artifacts, you name it.
And it's not just one of these stores each. Their are multiple stores of the same shit! In fact there were so many multiple stores that it really became ridiculous.
What was weird was that each store had a minimum 5 employees and sometimes more. Now that might not seem too bad except the fact that the size of the stores were not much bigger than a room at the Y.M.C.A. Trust me I know...
So we would walk in and not only would we be attacked by the employees, but they would follow us around. It felt like they were expecting us to rob them. And this wasn't an isolated incident. It
happened in every single store we walked into. And I walked into a lot because I couldn't believe all the stores in this place.
Another thing was that they had 5 liquor stores, 5 electronic stores, 5 watch stores, 5 toy stores, 5 this, 5 that, and none of them were competing with each other. They seemed to be state owned. I guess that's what you would call it. If this was the case though, then why have 5 of each store in the airport. Why not put 100 different stores?
We didn't buy anything because the prices were outrageous. There was no bargain. We came from Costa Rica where it was 500 Colones to an American Dollar and going to Argentina where it was 3 Pesos to an American Dollar. Panama was equal or more in some cases...
It seemed that they cared more about retail then they did the actual airport. The terminals were just in the way. You had to navigate through the mall of endless shops to find your gate hidden around the Helly Kitty Store... Maybe they should have put more of an effort into their pricing.
After walking around aimlessly, looking at the shops we started to get hungry. After a half fast meal on our flight from Costa Rica we never satified our hungry horrors.
All around the Airport were signs for restaurants. Now considering they structured their airport into a mall, there has to be a food court/dining area for all the travelers and shoppers.
WRONG!!!
We walked and walked and walked. Up and down and back again. Up some stairs and down some stairs. Looking for the restaurant that the signs had promised. We were lost. We couldn't seem to find this F-ing place.
We finally get back to the original restaurant sign and lok once again to see where it was pointing to. We know it's not down there because we have checked ten thousand times, so I go over to ask an airport personal.
"Excuse me sir. Hablo English? Great. We've been walking around here following the restaurant signs and can't seem to find it. Everytime we look the only thing we see is that Hot Dog Stand. That can't be the restaurant can it?"
"Si Senor, it is."
You've got to be kidding me???
4 comments:
HAHAHAHAHA!
when you were walking around for ages, i bet you were complaining NO END!!
oh, and on the 5 people per store and govt owned; do you think it's to decrease unemployment? like, an actual ploy?
Actually it became quite comical. It really became a quest to find the restaurant...
I dunno about decreasing unemployment, but I wish I could find that kind of help for my store.
Would probably only have to pay them in Hot Dogs...
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