Once a favourite with Western expats sick and tired of Thailand’s shifting immigration rules, Cambodia is now as close to a Chinese province as it’s possible to get. The first target was the country’s former favourite holiday destination of Sihanoukville, now a hotchpotch of casinos and designated as a vast international port on China’s new Belt and Road. The coastal cities of Kep and Kampot, also popular with expats as a refuge from their former location’s shambolic redevelopment, are next on the list.

The advertorials celebrating the Chinese takeover of Sihanoukville rave about five-star hotels, high end restaurants and shopping centres whilst its devastated local population attempts to adjust. Kampot and Kep provinces ae now home to expats on the run from Sihanoukville’s rebuilding, with huge swathes of former rice paddies between Kep and the border now the site of equally massive Chinese developments. Some expats are posting the construction is so huge it’s resembling entire cities, with the roads all but destroyed due to heavy earth-moving machinery and lorries.

God'sGift wrote: ↑Sat Jul 11, 2020 12:41 pm It will be fine when all the hot Chinese girls start arriving though