Overall Panama is a wonderful country to spend some time.  However even with my quite large travel experience in Latin America, I was shocked by Colon and I think it's really, really dangerous.  By all means, visit Panama, but stay out of Colon!  The City of Colon downtown area is not very safe for visitors and there is still a lot to do before it becomes safe and clean.  There are extremely nice places to visit in the province of Colon: Porto Bello, Isla Grande, San Lorenzo fortress, Gatun locks (the biggest locks of the Panama Canal).

I normally like every place that I visit, but this is one place that I could not wait to get out of and as a matter of fact, I cut a 7 day visit to 4 days and spent the rest of the time Porto Bello.

My advice..............Stay away from Colon, at least for now.