Sihanoukville is, for better and for worse, one of Cambodia's most changeable cities. Founded in the 1950s as the great deep-water port of the newly independent country, and named in honour of King Norodom Sihanouk, for a long time it was a laid-back beach and backpacker destination, with sand, bars and a relaxed vibe on the Gulf of Thailand. That Sihanoukville is gone: in just a few years, a wave of Chinese investment turned it into a huge, chaotic hub of casinos, skyscrapers and construction sites, many of them now half-finished.
It's worth saying plainly so you don't get a surprise: the Sihanoukville of old guidebooks, with idyllic beaches and backpacker prices, barely exists anymore. The city filled up with towers, signs in Mandarin, traffic, casinos and unfinished buildings, and several beaches lost their charm. The Cambodian government has been trying to 'clean up' the city, shut down casinos linked to online scams and give it a new face, but the transformation is still under way and the result, for now, is a city under permanent construction rather than a beach paradise.
So why come? Because Sihanoukville is still the gateway to the best of the Cambodian coast: the islands of Koh Rong and Koh Rong Samloem, with their white-sand beaches, turquoise water and bioluminescent plankton. Most travellers use the city as a transit point: they arrive, catch the ferry and head off to the islands. This guide explains how to do it right (which ferry to take, how much it costs, where to sleep if you have to stay the night) and what's still worth seeing in a city reinventing itself in fits and starts.
Unlike almost every other city in Cambodia, Sihanoukville is modern: it didn't exist until the mid-20th century. Before that there were just fishing villages on Kompong Som bay. After independence from France in 1953, King Norodom Sihanouk pushed for the construction of the country's first and only deep-water port to secure access to the sea independent of the Mekong Delta, then controlled by Vietnam. The port opened in 1956 and the new city was renamed Sihanoukville in 1958, in honour of the monarch. It went through turbulent times during the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge regime, and in the decades of peace it became a beach and backpacker destination. Its most radical transformation came from 2017 onwards, when Chinese investment, linked to the Belt and Road Initiative, filled it with casinos, towers and construction, completely changing its face. The detailed story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Cambodia's coastline on the Gulf of Thailand: the colonial pepper towns, the port a king had built and the white-sand islands of the south.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Almost all of Cambodia's major cities are old: Phnom Penh, Siem Reap next to Angkor, Battambang, Kampot. Sihanoukville is the big exception. Until the mid-20th century, this stretch of Kompong Som Bay, on the Gulf of Thailand, held nothing more than a few fishing villages surrounded by jungle and untouched beaches. The city we know today did not grow over the centuries: it was created on purpose, almost from nothing, through a political and strategic decision.
That decision had to do with independence. When Cambodia freed itself from French colonial rule in 1953, under the leadership of King Norodom Sihanouk, the young country faced a serious geographical problem: its main access to the sea depended on the Mekong River and its delta, which runs through Vietnamese territory. Relying on a neighbour to trade with the world was a huge vulnerability for a nation that wanted to assert its sovereignty. Cambodia needed its own gateway to the ocean.
The answer was to build a deep-water port from scratch on the Gulf of Thailand coast, in Kompong Som Bay. It was Sihanouk who drove the project in the 1950s, with French and American technical and financial support. Roads were cut through the jungle to connect the new port with Phnom Penh, and in a place where shortly before there had been only fishermen, a modern city began to rise. So was born the great maritime symbol of independent Cambodia.
The deep-water port of Kompong Som opened to shipping in 1956, just three years after independence. It was a huge achievement for the young nation: for the first time, Cambodia had its own access to the sea, able to receive large ocean-going vessels without depending on the Vietnamese Mekong delta. The initial facilities could handle several large ships at once, and over time they were expanded until it became the country's only deep-water port, a status it still holds today.
In 1958, the city that had grown up around the port was officially renamed Sihanoukville, in honour of Norodom Sihanouk, the dominant political figure in Cambodia at the time. It was, in a way, a showcase city for the national project: modern, planned, forward-looking, with new avenues, international-style buildings and hotels such as the iconic Independence, a work of the New Khmer Architecture of the 1960s.
During that period, Sihanoukville was also a modest holiday destination, with its still-quiet beaches and the feel of a young seaside city. But the calm would not last long. The whole region was about to be dragged into the Vietnam War and Cambodia's internal collapse, and the strategic port that had given the city life would, precisely because of its value, become the setting for violent episodes.
The 1970s were tragic for all of Cambodia, and Sihanoukville was no exception. After Sihanouk was overthrown in 1970 and Lon Nol's regime took over, the country was plunged into civil war and dragged into the Vietnam conflict. The port, because of its strategic value, was a sensitive point. In April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge seized power across Cambodia and imposed their totalitarian, genocidal regime, which in three and a half years would cause the deaths of around a quarter of the country's population through executions, forced labour, starvation and disease.
A few weeks after the takeover, in May 1975, Sihanoukville was the scene of one of the last episodes of the Indochina war for the United States: the Mayaguez incident. Khmer Rouge forces captured an American merchant ship, the SS Mayaguez, off the Cambodian coast. President Gerald Ford ordered a military rescue operation that included fighting and air strikes around Sihanoukville and the island of Koh Tang. The operation left dozens of American servicemen dead and is remembered as the last official battle of the United States in the Vietnam War.
Under the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979), as in the rest of the country, normal urban life was abolished: cities were emptied and the population forced into collective farm labour. Sihanoukville, a modern port city and a symbol of everything the regime despised, came to a standstill. Only after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and then long years of war and recovery, would the city and its port slowly come back to life.
With the arrival of peace in the 1990s and Cambodia's reopening to the world, Sihanoukville reinvented itself as a tourist destination. Through the 2000s and 2010s it was, above all, a beach and backpacker town: travellers from all over the world came for its beaches —Serendipity, Otres, Independence—, its cheap bars, its laid-back vibe and, above all, as a base for escaping to the nearby islands. It was a classic stop on Southeast Asia's 'backpacker trail', with low prices and a carefree feel.
All of that changed at dizzying speed from 2017 onwards, with an unprecedented flood of Chinese investment. Under the Belt and Road Initiative driven by Beijing, Sihanoukville became a magnet for Chinese capital that turned it, within a few years, into a giant city of casinos and construction. Dozens of towers, hotels and gaming halls went up; signs switched to Mandarin; prices rose; many local businesses were pushed out. It is estimated that a huge share of businesses passed into Chinese hands, and many of the new buildings were left half-finished when the cycle cooled.
The city gained international fame, but also notoriety for the problems that came with it: unfinished buildings, environmental damage to some beaches, and the rise of online gambling and cyber-scam operations linked to some compounds. The Cambodian government has tried to 'clean up' Sihanoukville, ban online gambling, close casinos tied to scams and give the city a new urban face. The result, today, is a city in full transition: neither the backpacker beach of the past nor the polished casino paradise that was promised, but a city under construction still looking for its place. For travellers, though, it keeps a clear and irreplaceable role: it remains the departure point for the idyllic islands of Koh Rong and Koh Rong Samloem, the real treasure of this coast.
