Cambodian dream islands offset coastal boom town
4 December 2018
SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia -- Even the golden lions look jaded on the Serendipity Beach roundabout in Sihanoukville, Cambodia's southern coast boomtown.

Breakneck Chinese-led development has choked this town's once spacious boulevards. Long stretches of the once-pristine coastline are now lined with construction sites. Dozens of cranes soar above a skyline of expensive high-rises and more than 55 casinos that are catering for the gambling habits of a fast-rising tide of Chinese tourists. Another 50 are expected to open within the next year or so, according to local officials, potentially transforming this once laid-back backpacker town into a tropical version of Macau.

"We love it here," said Wang, an elevator installation worker from Hubei, China. His colleague, Chou, agreed: "There are many different types of cuisines here, Chinese, Korean, Mediterranean, and we love the sea. We don't have it where we come from," he told the Nikkei Asian Review.

The hotels, apartments and casinos these workers are building are a big draw for Chinese visitors. But the rapid urbanization of the coast around Sihanoukville is threatening the ecosystem of the Koh Rong archipelago, a cluster of islands southwest of the city. Some island resorts are luring growing numbers of tourists despite being part of a 450 sq. km marine reserve, the country's first large-scale protected marine environment, since June 2016.

In February, the reserve was expanded to 524 sq. km, and declared Cambodia's first national park. However, a $2-billion island tourism development planned by Royal Group, Cambodia's largest conglomerate, is going ahead on Koh Rong and Koh Rong Sanloem, the archipelago's two biggest islands. The group has already opened a resort on Koh Rong, and an airport, golf course and marina are expected to follow.

But just an hour away by boat from Sihanoukville, the waters of the archipelago turn from murky to crystal clear, largely thanks to the efforts of an Australian couple, Rory Hunter and Melita Koulmandas Hunter, who acquired the islands of Koh Ouen and neighboring Koh Bong, just northeast of Koh Rong, in 2008.

Together, the two small islands are known as "Song Saa," which means "the Sweethearts" in Khmer and is also the name given to a Hong Kong-registered charity set up by the Hunters which operates in Cambodia as a nongovernmental organization. The Song Saa Foundation works with local researchers and villagers to try to restrict development and conserve the archipelago, and supervises a separate marine reserve around the two islands that was established by the Hunters in 2007, together with an five-star eco-resort on Koh Ouen.

"We have established a 200m-wide marine park zone all around the Song Saa islands, where fishing boats are not allowed to come any more," said Heng Ngoun Chhay, 38, the foundation's marine research and conservation officer. A native of Koh Rong island, Chhay recalled that the sea was filled with turtles, dolphins and sea horses when he was growing up in the 1980s. That changed after the arrival of fishermen from nearby Thai and Vietnamese waters, who taught the locals to use bombs and cyanide for fishing. Plastic pollution also began threatening marine life, eventually reducing the marine population to a few sea urchins, he noted.

"We are trying to rehabilitate and conserve the marine environment, and we'll soon deploy an artificial reef to create more habitat and improve the existing corals," said Chhay. "We also do weekly clean-ups to reduce plastic waste impact, [and] a monthly community clean-up at Prek Svay village, the biggest settlement on Koh Rong. And once a year, we host a big coastal and marine clean-up event on all the beaches in the archipelago, calling up our partners from the Cambodian Fisheries Administration team [a government agency] and other partners and businessmen who support the cause."
https://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Life/ ... jpzi51Vdr8

Eco tourism. Strip the whole place bare of any natural vegetation, cover it in concrete and then get some imported palm trees and a few flowers.

No

I'm hearing we're getting eco-tourism here in Osoam.
18 holes of eco-tourism apparently.

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