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As a visitor to any country you find a lot of things that you see fascinating. Like for instance here on S. Maarten seeing people walking with a beer bottle in their hand, or even seeing people drive with a beer bottle in their hand, people talking on their cellular while driving. Drivers stopping on the road to chat with an oncoming car. The usual stuff. It may be fascinating to watch as a visitor and most memorable. Now let’s turn the tables and pretend that you live on the island, things that used to be fascinating start to get dated and annoying. Here is a list of the bad and annoying things about St. Maarten/St. Martin as we could come up with it now. (We will update as more things come into mind) - No sidewalks: Walking or bicycling is a hassle. You constantly must watch out for cars as you are walking on the road. - No rural road drainage network. No drains, no channels: Water just stays on the road, and when the sun comes back up, you got potholes. With no sidewalks, hard to avoid to walk in it, with a car you must drive in it, and the next bad thing about it, if there was excessive rainfall, road runoff, joins people private septic overflow… guess what, yeah, a stinking situation. Completely unhealthy. It takes days for this to evaporate, yet children must walk in it or play in the area. - Everything dislocated, need a vehicle. You cant just walk out of your house and get a bread, or do many things together, you gotta go with a vehicle almost each time you want to do something, everything is dislocated. - Civil Servants. Most are unfriendly, there is no guidance, don’t ask them for help, don’t ask questions. There are no information leaflets or posters when you enter institutions. Simple example. You need a license plate for a car you just bought. What do you do? And where do you go? It’s okay if you know. But otherwise you have to ask around. - Urbanization: Ghetto/Upscale properties mix. Let’s say government zoning did not exist for a long time. You can have a shack next to a pricey home. Look for instance at driving to Marigot, nice green landscaping left and right, million dollar villa left and right from priviledged families. Then you enter Marigot, shacks, youngster hanging/loitering in corners, drug addicts, beggers. The problem is, there is only one road, so you can’t avoid it, you must go through this. Same goes for many other areas, Grand Case, you enter a shanty town to meet the ‘world’s finest French cuisines at the end of the street. - The utility supplier on Dutch St. Maarten (GEBE N.V.) does not offer reliable electricity supply. Expect your current to go off, most often. If you are working and you are not home, maybe that's something you can live with besides stuff in your fridge going bad. If you're a business owner on the other hand, your employees can't do their work, no computer, no internet, (no phone if you have a pbx system), no A/C, no light, so everyone is stepping out to catch some air. If you are in the retail business, your ice cream is melting, your drinks are getting warm, your frozen goods are getting spoiled. It's not like the current just goes for 10 minutes, as an example last Friday the current went for 6 hours!!!!! - Road condition. Should we enter the Guiness book of records for country with most potholes? - Drivers attitudes. Stopping on the road to chat with someone. A habit taken over from ‘donkey years’ - Neglect of environment. When they do drink that beer in their car, when done, open the window, and throw out on the road. - Bus stops. Public transportation is handled by individuals. Majority of buses are small 6 passenger buses. There is no time schedule. There are no real bus stops. (yes there are a few). A bus stops anywhere where a passenger screams “STOP”. Yes, also in the middle of the road mostly because a bus can’t always go off the road because of parked cars. - Corruption: Many government officials are involved with private companies from either themselves or families. Major industries like shipping, telecommunication, fuel are their monopoly. If you want to bypass bureaucracy it can be done under the table. An example: prostitution, a whorehouse/prostition is forbidden, yet there are about 5 whorehouses on St. Maarten (none on the French side). - Crime: The jails are full, so prisoners are freed to make space for new criminals. So criminals are back in normal society, portraying that when you do a crime you are back out in no time. So, this doesn’t really help the idea of being punished if you do a crime. Crimes generally fall in these categories: Murders in local bars, murders related to cheating boyfriends/girlfriends, drug related murders. Tourist related crime: breaking in cars. Breaking in villas. Social engineering: You come back from the beach, your car doesn’t start, you open the hood, your battery is gone. Suddenly a good Samaritan comes by and acts surprised but is willing to help you to get a battery if you pay him for a battery, you pay him, and after a while he brings you a battery, (probably the one that came out of that same car). ATM crime: attacking someone getting some cash at gunpoint for your pin. - Euro/Dollar, supermarket pricing: You have the many little Chinese supermarkets or the bigger supermarkets. If you go on the French side little Chinese ones, they are mostly belonging to the Afoo Group. All pricelabels show Afoo. Afoo is on the Dutch side, prices on labels are in guilders. If you go on the French side Chinese, that same label in Guilders is now your price in EURO! But you can also pay it in dollars. Pay attention. - Necessity of ordering stuff online (Can’t find locally). A lot of things can’t be found on the island so you must order online and ship it in. - Court system in Dutch on Dutch side, French on French Side: While everyone speaks English on the Dutch side, even the people in power, as mothertongue, the court system is in Dutch. If you don’t speak it, it’s a hassle to understand what’s going on. Same goes for the French side. - Western Union service at DHL location Colebay: complete unacceptable service. If you had someone from overseas send you money, you got the Money Transfer Number, you go to receive your money, the ladies behind the counter, might have no customer in front, they will let you wait, because they are busy chatting with their blackberry or chatting with each other, then with a long face, they will say ‘next’, like you are the lucky one, then upon seeing that the transfer number isn’t showing up in their computer, they will just tell you that they” can’t help you” with no other explanation. There is no manager or someone else you can ask for help. It’s suggested you go online and call the toll free USA number and check what went wrong. - No useful statistical data: You want to start a business, you want to know demographics, income levels, visitors data. Where can you get that information? Some priviledged organization make these statistics like the SHTA (St. Maarten Hospitality Association, which is a private foundation with members being hotels and businesses) they know a bit about arrivals and stay over. That might be interesting if you are starting a business in the touristic field. The airport has the arrivals data, but not very updated. The harbour has cruise arrivals but not very updated. You can call and ask around but you get the fingerpointing. - Business Opening hours: Dutch St. Maarten is better in this than the French side, but this is mostly because of the Chinese or Indian business owners that want to make money. If this is a touristic island, businesses should be open most of the time and not be obliged to be closed. Perfect example is French St. Martin. Excessive lunch breaks, closed on weekends, closed on the dot at 5pm or 6pm. Marigot is a dead place on Sunday. If you work all week, wouldn't it be normal to consider that you can only spend after hours and on weekends? Shouldn't businesses be open then? This list is by no means final. Will be updated on a constant basis. Any thing you want to add, let us know by filling in the contact form. |
