With pristine beaches rivalling Asia's best holiday destinations, a five-star hotel, a reopened airport and a planned golf course, Cambodia's Sihanoukville is poised to jump into the global tourism arena.
Thousands of tourists are already lured to Cambodia by the ancient Angkor Wat temple complex but few other sights attract their attention or their desperately sought-after dollars.
PHOTO: AFP
Sniffing opportunity, the government and private investors are lining up to position the southwestern port town of Sihanoukville as a tropical getaway, competing with the likes of Thailand's Phuket and Indonesia's Bali.
"If we compare, the potential is better than Phuket because of the quality of sand -- it's white -- and the water is clean. The offshore islands have coral reefs, there's fishing," enthuses city tourism director Teng Huy.
A port town established in the 1950s -- it remains Cambodia's youngest city -- Sihanoukville became a popular resort among the elite until the rise of the Khmer Rouge, which embarked on a genocide that decimated the country.
It was re-discovered by backpackers in the 1990s and today retains a sleepy, faded charm, with the occasional cow wandering through the streets and ramshackle restaurants on many of its beaches.
The locally-owned Sokha Hotel has extended Sihanoukville's appeal beyond backpackers to well-heeled travellers by opening its 15-hectare, 180-room hotel in April, the first five-star operation here.
"The beach product is excellent, it's top class. Great sand, great sea, that's a great start, we're out of the gate and running well," says general manager Anthony O'Neill, a 12-year veteran of the Asian tourism industry.
More government help however is needed to rebuild the infrastructure shattered from conflict that only ended in 1998, as well as better attractions, to secure Sihanoukville's place on the international circuit, O'Neill says.
A nine-hole golf course being developed by Malaysia's Ariston Holdings along nearby Occheuteal beach is one such crucial drawcard, he says.
"The golf course concept has to be raced along ... because if you can't get core features you simply can't contain people in a holiday resort and even think you're going to challenge your competitors in Asia," he says.
"I'm competing with Bali, Phuket, even Pattaya. It's these markets we keep an eye on -- can we do it here?"
Sokha is just one of several hotels positioned to enter the market.
The quirky art deco Independence Hotel, which drew fashionable crowds in the 1960s prior to the 1975 rise of the Khmer Rouge, is due to open by September, while a 120-room hotel is packaged with the golf course project.
Scheduled flights -- also seen as vital to Sihanoukville's rejuvenation -- are on the horizon with the reopening of its airport in April to chartered flights. A runway extension is slated to be completed before year end, making it a potential destination for regional airlines.
Martin Standbury, the project manager for the golf course due to open within the coming year, says Sihanoukville may be sleepy for now, but its potential is enormous.
"For now tourists get a bit bored. There's the beach, cheap beer, seafood -- they probably need a few more attractions," he says.
"I reckon there is huge potential here over the next three to five years, not just for foreigners but the locals," he says, noting that Cambodia's emerging middle class has begun holidaying here again.
Business owners -- many of them foreigners who were travelling through but decided to stay, captivated by the landscape and laidback lifestyle -- say they have noticed a steady increase in numbers.
"Despite the anti-Thai riots (in Phnom Penh in January last year), SARS, (the terror attacks in) America and the elections, my trade has increased in the last year as has everybody else's," says hotel and bar owner Richard Blackley.
Teng Huy's office puts the number of tourists who visited last year at just over 114,000, 6 percent less than 2002 due to the regional SARS outbreak, but for the first three months this year the figure jumped by 29 percent from last year.
Blackley, who moved here four years ago, says the town was once awash with small arms -- like the rest of the country -- but has normalized and authorities are making an effort to renovate the town.
"Infrastructure is being repaired, government buildings are being repaired, you can see improvements with parks and gardens. ... And the race for land on the beaches is phenomenal," he says.
"I'm extremely optimistic. Every day something new is being done."
Li Li, a Chinese technical worker on a hydropower plant in a nearby province, comes here every few months with a half dozen colleagues who are drawn by the seafood and scenery.
"Sihanoukville is very, very beautiful -- the water, the sky," he said after a beachside seafood feast.
"I think more and more people will come to Cambodia and here."
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built