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Sihanoukville: Rise and Fall of a Frontier City

globalchinapulse.net · 7,062 words · saved by 1 readers

This first visit to Sihanoukville had been wonderful, I would even say magical … [O]n that day of September 1992, all we could see was a small town with a huge, huge, long beach. The ocean deep blue, the sky blue. It was like heaven. Going up that mountain and seeing this beautiful landscape, you felt on top of the world. And nobody was there. —Youk Chhang (2021) Reminiscences such as this are not uncommon among those who had the opportunity to visit Sihanoukville, a small city on the Cambodian coast, before a massive influx of foreign capital, mostly from Chinese investors, radically changed the urban landscape in the second half of the 2010s. From quiet seaside town known mostly as a backpacker destination, the place turned first into a booming frontier city with aspirations to become the ‘new Macau’ and then into a notorious haven for online scam operations. How did it come to this? How did a city once famous as a destination for low-end tourism turn into a hub for human trafficking

Sihanoukville: Rise and Fall of a Frontier City Skip to main content Aerial view of Sihanoukville in September 2022. Source: Roun Ry. Sihanoukville: Rise and Fall of a Frontier City Sihanoukville: Rise and Fall of a Frontier City September 16, 2024 | Focus Ivan Franceschini Chief Editor, Global China Pulse Roun Ry Freelance Photographer Share This first visit to Sihanoukville had been wonderful, I would even say magical … [O]n that day of September 1992, all we could see was a small town with a huge, huge, long beach. The ocean deep blue, the sky blue. It was like heaven. Going up that mountai

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