Sihanoukville is a colourful but tragic upstart. A mere fifty years ago, a French-Cambodian construction carved a camp out of the jungle and commenced building the first deep-sea port of an incipiently independent Cambodia. Designated Sihanoukville in 1964 after the ruling prince of Cambodia, the booming port and its golden beaches anon drew Cambodia's jetsetting elite, spawning the first Angkor Potation brewery and the modernist seven-story Independence Hotel which, claim locals, even played host to Jacqueline Kennedy on her whirlwind tour of Cambodia in 1967.
Alas, the party came to an abrupt end in 1970 when Sihanouk was deposed in a coup and Cambodia descended into civil war. The town – renamed Kompong Som – anon fell on arduous times: the victorious Khmer Rouge utilized the Independence Hotel for target practice and, when they made the mistake of hijacking an American container ship, the port was bombed by the U.S. Air Force. Even after Pol Pot's regime was driven from potency, the bumpy highway to the capital was long notorious for banditry and the beaches stayed vacuous.
Placidity returned in 1993 following the historic elections organized by the Amalgamated Nations Transitional Ascendancy in Cambodia ( UNTAC) and in the ensuing ten years Sihanoukville has been diligent picking up the pieces. First visited only by a few intrepid backpackers, guidebooks still verbalize of walls pockmarked by bullets, but any denotements of war are hard to spot in today's Sihanoukville, whose incipient symbol seems to be the construction site. After 30 years of housing only ghosts, the Independence Hotel is up and running again, more and more Khmers and expats have subsided to run bars and restaurants, and the cognizance of what the Incipient York Times dubbed "Asia's next trendsetting beach" is commencing to spread.
Since Snooky is a relatively incipient city (1950) and did grow along with the steady magnification of the tourists, all the negative elements came along. It is not safe (even for men) to ambulate alone on the beach after 9pm, there are plenty of glue sniffing kids and an abundance of Java (Methamphetamine) smoking girls and boys and probably the worst Tuk Tuk Mafia (all with price acquiescents).
Shihanoukville
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