Cambodia’s changing coast
Dec. 26, 2018
No streetlights, no signs of human life were visible as my taxi inched in the dark toward Sihanoukville. This seaside city is one of the fastest-growing tourist destinations on the Cambodian coast, and I had braced myself for an onslaught of neon. Instead, at 9:30 p.m., all I could see was dust billowing behind us, on a highway where pavement was more of an idea than a reality.

That eeriness was enveloping as I settled into my sleek, all-white hotel, Naia Resort, with diagonal outdoor walkways stacked one on top of another, like gills. It felt as if I were in a “Miami Vice”-type building that had been dropped onto the set of “Lost.” Outside, barking dogs cased the sandy road. At the only open restaurant — which was right on the beach, with waves lapping at my table — a bat flew into my arm.

When morning broke, the nothingness revealed itself to be a landscape of construction sites. Three high-rises were going up next to, across from, and cater-corner to Naia. Piles of trash adorned those dusty roads.

I had, quite by accident, chosen to stay on Sihanoukville’s Otres 2 Beach, where it is still possible to take a lazy walk, sun yourself and take a paddleboard lesson without feeling like you’re in a tourist hot spot. But you can see the end of all that on the horizon.

Eighteen months ago, I’d heard, the area 10 minutes down the coast, where Sihanoukville’s Otres 1 and Occheuteal Beaches now sit, had been all beach shacks and fishermen selling their catches from baskets on top of their heads. Now the place — called “the new Macau” by its developers — is blanketed in Chinese-built casinos and high-rises. A Chinatown is being built between Otres 1 and Otres 2...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/trav ... coast.html