National Museum in Phnom Penh – Cambodia

Travel Tales: My Visit to Sihanoukville, Cambodia

After two days of exploring Cambodia’s blasé capital, Phnom Penh, I ‘escaped’ on a bus to the coastal beach area of Sihanoukville. At the time of my visit in late 2003 Sihanoukville was being lauded as Cambodia’s up and coming beach resort area with beautiful, quiet, undeveloped beaches and a relaxed atmosphere.

What I found was an entirely different scene.

Sihanoukville Cambodia – photo from Flckr CC by Damien @ Flckr

To start on a positive note, I happily admit that the seaside views were pretty, the water a beautiful aqua-marine color, the weather fantastic and the area fairly quiet. Despite that, the entire region essentially amounted to a sprawling tourist beach ghetto.

Several miles-long but extremely narrow beaches line the coast. On top of each beach, not behind the beach, but right on the narrow strips of sand, from one end of each beach to the other, was an unending row of squalid thatched pavilions, ratty beach umbrellas, tattered beach chairs and ugly little wood tables covered in linoleum.

Nearly every inch of every narrow beach strip was covered with those rundown umbrellas, tables and chairs. There was hardly enough empty sand to walk past the icky mess without wading in the ocean. It was all immensely ugly.

Sihanoukville Beach - photo from Flckr CC by Damien @ Flckr

Sihanoukville Beach from Flckr CC by Damien @ Flckr

It also felt extremely crowded. Even if there were only a few people on the beach, it still felt crowded because of the hoards of ratty beach chairs. All I could do was stare, wide-eyed, wondering, “How is this UNdeveloped?”

In all honesty, Sihanhoukville was the ugliest beach development I’d ever seen. (And I’ve seen a lot of beaches around Asia!)

Besides the horrid beach development, none of the guesthouses were on the beach. Instead, they were all up on a hill, a 15-20 minute walk away. In SE Asia I’d become accustomed to staying in lovely thatched bungalows set right on the beach. At Sihanoukville, I had to hike from my room to even see a beach or ocean.

Sihanoukville market – photo from Flckr CC by spotter_nl

I will admit that some of the guesthouses and bungalows were nice, but even back in 2003 the area was already a tourist slum. The hilltop travelers center consisted of two broken-up, potholed dirt roads full of small, uninspired tourist bars and restaurants serving pancakes, fruit shakes, steak, pizzas, sandwiches and pasta. Now how is that Untouristed?

Besides all that:

1) I got mauled by sand fleas during my first day on the beach strip and spent several days sporting pink dots all over my legs and arms. (at least they were pink. lol)

2) I had to constantly worry about theft of any possessions I set on the beach. That made swimming quite stressful, when I dared risk it.

Sihanoukville Cambodia by spotter_nl

3) The motorcycle taxi guys in Sihanoukville were notorious, even among the Cambodians, as being extreme rip-off artists who got pissed off at any tourists who were not ‘rip-off-able’. I met one of them when I arrived.

He was so pissed off at me for not paying his extortionist price that he raced us around at top speed, weaving in and out of traffic, just inches from other vehicles. I assume he was trying to scare me into paying. In fact, he was trying to charge me way too much money but acting like I was the bad guy.

4) At the time of my visit, and for several months before, there were regular violent attacks of tourists at night whereby people were pushed off their moving motorbikes and robbed. If they were luckier they were only stopped and robbed. If unluckier, they got sliced open by machete! (as happened to a young traveler soon before my arrival. They wanted his girlfriend.)

5) Strangely, in 2003 several westerners previously living in Thailand were apparently ‘escaping’ from Thailand (too touristy, they claimed) to ‘lovely’ Sihanoukville, Cambodia! Eh?

Snake Pit Bar – Sihanoukville Cambodia – photo from Flckr CC

I did find out who some of those Thailand escapees were: German men in their 50s who love smoking pot, drinking whiskey and having sex with young pretty women or girls.

At the time, the Thai government made a huge crack down on the country’s drug and the sex trade. The police and military imprisoned and killed hundreds of suspects, including Thai nationals and foreigners.

That’s what the Germans in Sihanoukville were complaining about. That’s what they had escaped from.

So they had run away to Cambodia. They much preferred the lawless, do-anything-you-like attitude prevalent in Cambodia. Several of them had opened guesthouses and bars in Sihanoukville. And child prostitution was a growing problem in the area.

All I could think was, “Hey, between the ugly beach development, the late night thugs, beach thefts, aggressive taxi drivers and the newly arrived druggies and child molesters, Sihaoukville should develop into a great place.”

Well, they can have it! Good riddance!

crowded Sihanoukville Beach – photo from Flckr CC by Damien @ Flckr

I have definitely visited much better beaches, with much more beautiful views, with bungalows on the sand and without the dangers or sleazy sex scene.

Why anyone claims Sihanoukville is a great place is beyond my comprehension. All I can imagine is that they’ve never visited any other Asian beaches?

As for myself, I quickly escaped yet another Cambodian rat-hole (Phnom Penh being the first) and happily returned to Thailand.

En route I stopped at famous Angkor Wat / Siem Reap. Thankfully, that proved to be the one great place I visited in Cambodia. Read about my visit to Angkor Wat here

QUESTIONS:

If you’ve visited Sihanoukville, what were your experiences?

Did you hear about or run into any dangers there?

If you’ve visited recently, what’s Sihanoukville like nowadays?

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You might also want to check out:

My Impressions of Phnom Penh

My Visit to Angkor Wat & Siem Reap

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