Panama has many benefits. It has great nature and weather, friendly people, English is second language, it is one of the safest counties in Latin America, it has strong property rights and a functioning legal system. Panama City has US standards in it’s health care institutions and huge shopping malls to get the stuff you cannot find in Bocas.
Easy to get a permanent residency
If you are interested to become a resident in Panama I can give you some advice and connect you to lawyers who can help you with the paper work. You will find online as well several companies offering the service for doing all the paper work. For instance: https://liberation.travel (not affiliated).
For citizens from Europe, the US or Canada it is usually very easy to get the Friendly Nations Visa. In my case it took me about 10 days to get all the application process done and total costs have been about 3000 USD (my lawyer did all, I just needed to attend for signing the papers). After the application it took another 2 months until I received the permanent residency.