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Sihanoukville,
Land's End at the End of Isolation
by Richard Friedel
Photos from Cambodian Emissary article.
Are you one of the uninitiated? Probably, and whatever preconceived ideas you have about Sihanoukville, they will be shattered once you arrive. Cambodian guidebooks pay little attention to it because Angkor Wat gets top billing. In the South, the exotic, palm-shaded coastal shots on postcards and wall-calendars are typically of Kampot or Kep-sur-Mer, some 80 "air" kilometers east of Sihanoukville. And when printers place it on topographical maps, it's as if it were a footnote. Similarly, most writers appear to be too young or unseeing (or unfeeling) to get Sihanoukville in some semblance of sensible perspective. Why? Presumably because while you're there it's as if you aren't in Cambodia at all, at least not the Cambodia of negative headlines.
Then where are you? Sihanoukville isn't flat; albeit on a smaller scale, it's hilly--windswept and almost barren in some places--the way Amman, Jordan, is, or even Jerusalem. And there are many fetching seaside coves just 1 to 2 kilometers from the middle of downtown, not unlike those on the beachy coasts of Cyprus and Crete. Lacy pine trees, which seem to flourish the closer you get to the sea, make it look non-Asian to non-Asians. And the present port is so dinky that you might even miss it, especially if you turn left off Route 4 and up the hill to the ville just before passing the train station. A single train--its diesel locomotive was made in Czechoslovakia in 1993--arrives every other afternoon and departs for Phnom Penh on the mornings in between.
The town of Sihanoukville (its population was 16,000 in the mid-1960s and may be no more than that today) sits several kilometers back from the lip of the sea on what's called a headland. Almost immediately behind it perches a wat (temple) on top of an even higher hill. Seen from a distance, the whole place has a medieval look--a bit like Assisi in Italy. Except that this provincial capital is associated with so many coconut trees that there's more risk of a coconut falling on your head in the middle of the street then of personal injury by a passing vehicle (mostly motorbikes).
Adding to the incongruity of things in general is the fact that you pass the sprawling Angkor brewery on the left soon after passing the "Welcome to Sihanoukville" sign on the right. One would expect to find that on the outskirts of Cambodia's capital, 232 kilometers to the north, a 90 minute drive if you are reckless. But there the squat, white buildings are under careening coconut palms on the high headland, and from their backsides there's a MGM view of the sweeping Gulf of Thailand two kilometers away and 100 breathless meters below your feet. Yes, there is a haphazardness to the placement of just about everything in Sihanoukville. One gets the impression it was developed in fits and spurts--nothing strategic or comprehensive here. For better or worse, a bit like contemporary Cambodian history.
This, of course, is precisely its charm. There isn't even a map. Phnom Penh travel agents claim they aren't represented in Sihanoukville and therefore won't book you a room. Thus it's very much a do-it-yourself kind of place. Mom and pop hotels don't provide transportation--motorbikes greet bus passengers--and service is unhurried like it is in Vientiane, the leisurely capital of drowsy Laos. One gets the distinct impression that the miniature waves would stop lapping the shore if the natives could figure out how to make the earth stop spinning and the moon stop rising.
"There's such inertia here," a European visitor said, "that I don't want to do anything, not even try and find a French restaurant come supper time. Like papers in a safe deposit box, day and night I feel I'm a prisoner of immobility. For better or worse, here you are altogether cut off from the modern world. On the flip side, it allows you to stop and take measure of what's really important in Life." He had found enough time to think like a philosopher.
This is only one side of the coin--tails--a side that won't tarry much longer in yesterday's shadow. It has already been flipped to tomorrow's side--heads--and real estate prices are booming. It is being led by the likes of Cambodian ministers who are familiar with the old saw about the three rules of real estate: location, location, location. Tea Banh, the minister of defense, has extremely good taste and bought a prime plot adjacent to a hilltop owned by the queen's mother. It has a whopping 360-degree view of everything at its feet, and benefits from breezes that skim over it from all points of the compass. Twenty years from now visitors will probably think they're in the mega-expensive hills of gilded Hollywood.
How expensive is it? Cheap, although the mini-boom is fueled by Malaysian speculators. Yet you're less than 1,800 kilometers from shop-until-you-drop Hong Kong, less than 1,000 kilometers from spit-and-polish Singapore, and less than 500 kilometers from the hustle-and-bustle of Bangkok. Sihanoukville land prices are, however, nowhere near the stratospheric sums of city-states because demand, thanks to years of negative headlines, is phenomenally low. On average, plot prices are based on flat rates of US$15 per square meter. Containing a small villa, a small plot bordering prime beachfront property recently sold for a mere US$40,000; the Phnom Penh owner was pressured to sell by snowballing gambling debts. With 141 meters of road frontage, a 400,000 sm property is on the block for US$6 million. A 28 by 114 meter plot overlooking Ariston's (the Malaysian holder of exclusive casino rights in Cambodia) Koh Island is for sale at an ordinary US$15,000 plus "land registration fee" of US$5,000. A newly built guesthouse called "Villa" (because it looks like one) on a double lot all but adjacent to Seaside, a 3-story oceanfront hotel, can be had for under US$400,000. Its owner has invested some US$250,000 in the 3-story structure.
However, it's still a buyer's market. About half of Sihanoukville, due to the kingdom's political crises that began decades ago, looks as though its part-time residents walked away from airy vacation homes in the 1960s and tossed their keys away. They had been pioneers of a sort: there had been so little in the ville before then that Kipling and Maugham never stepped nimble feet on the place to write about it. It's like Thailand's Pattaya was three and four decades ago: unspoiled beaches (due to the absence of people pollution), coconut trees and a few indigenous fishermen. The good news is that it's simply too far away from Phnom Penh to be exploited the way Pattaya was by expats hanging about Bangkok with too much free time on their hands. One thinks twice about driving 3.5 hours versus under 60 minutes. Too, there is great and beautiful scenery to tempt anyone's curiosity between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville, especially the pine-forested hill towns of Kirirom (675 meters above sea level) and Bokor (1,080 meters).
Wonderful French restaurants abound near serene beaches. Claude's is closed but Les Feuilles--its menu includes Asiatic courses--is open. North Americans and Europeans tend to congregate at the water's edge with children or lovers. Non-Westerners, mostly businessmen, seem to prefer the fast-paced life of the karaoke bars in the center of the ville itself. Reuters reports that "there are now 40 small hotels with 800 rooms." Town is also popular with Phnom Penhites, so much so that getting a room can be nigh impossible at the last minute, especially on sweltering weekends of the hot season (March through May or June) and any holiday, including just-invented ones (a head-of-state visiting Phnom Penh). Quick to see the marketing possibilities of motoring, Shell, Total and PTT have built gas stations on the outskirts of Sihanoukville as you drive north toward the Khmer capital.
This is also the reason why Sihanoukville is safe: there's only one exit--Route 4. (There is hardly any crime in Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat, for the same reason: one exit.) Nevertheless, guest rooms display signs that state "all kinds of arms and explosives are not allowed in the hotel." Ditto for VIP buses plying Route 4. And never mind the off-duty policemen who wander in and out of Spartan lobbies with holsters plainly visible under flowing safari shirts. They may be there for the sake of reassurance: yours. Other off-duty civil servants are the motorbike drivers who meet you at the bus terminal. (At Kang Keng, 10 kilometers out of town, is a not-very-much-used domestic airport. It was Soviet-built and opened in 1983.)
From the time of dinosaurs, what intrigues some are the dunes behind the beach. Few ever see them the first time they visit Sihanoukville, myself included. But many seaside hotels are built solidly on top of this windblown sand. That dunes appear absent is due to the fact that they're relatively broad, flat and easily covered by trucked-in dirt, making them convertible to building lots overnight. Which is exactly what happened in the 1950s and 60s. During the 1970s and 80s and early 90s all development stopped. What Ariston has fenced in southeast of Sihanoukville is absolutely pristine land. The low-profile dunes and abundant wildlife are still there but easily overlooked because, like a cobweb, Nature's handiwork is often delicate and ethereal. Herons live in freshwater marshes where water buffalo drink. Like kites without tails, sandpipers and plovers dip, swoop and soar about the beach, the dunes and the pines. Darwin would be inspired.
Sihanoukville of "Year 2000" and beyond will be a totally new creation (architecturally speaking, there's little to preserve: no historic buildings outside of temples, and the principal ones number two). But for now it's an uncomplicated and scenic place, the sort of rarity in the midst of the quarter of a billion people in the Mekong sub-region that represents a formula to make the headland become expensive quickly. On the other hand, geology and Nature impose natural restrictions: rolling topography and on-again, off-again monsoonal weather. This may keep large-scale land developers out, at least in the beginning; it may even be the brake on mass tourism while simultaneously creating a second Monaco. The clear-eyed from all walks of life will definitely want to see Sihanoukville before its maiden isolation ends. Buy low; sell high. It appears it will happen only once.