The new Macau. That’s what the Cambodian coastal city Sihanoukville is called nowadays. Chinese investors are building casinos there on a massive scale.
The southern port city lies on the new Silk Road (the so called ‘One Belt, One Road’) and is therefore interesting for China.
The Cambodian government is happy to accept the money. And Beijing never asks difficult questions.
“Things are happening so fast in Sihanoukville; the city has changed completely in only a few months time,” a friend tells me.
My last visit there was in December.
And so I wanted to see these ‘spectacular changes’ with my own eyes.
My friend was right. When you enter the city, you see casinos everywhere. There could be about a hundred by now, and new ones are constantly being built. Some of them are big showy palaces, but there are also obscure gambling houses.
Alongside those casinos you still find the typical Cambodian shops, where people drink tea and where food is skewered and cooked on the barbecue.
Tourists at the beach enjoy their cocktails or take a dip in the gulf of Thailand.
But all those elements are in disharmony with one another.
There is clearly no urban planning here.
It seems the builders got carte blanche to satisfy the hunger for gambling.
