How to fix Sihanoukville

Sihanoukville is a coastal city in Cambodia that is home to the largest port in the country. It also has some of the nicest municipal beaches in Southeast Asia.

Despite this advantage of having a beautiful coastal setting, the government went all in on trying to turn Sihanoukville into the Macau of Southeast Asia. With the casinos came the money launderers and scam operators, and now the tourists that Cambodia covet the most are staying away.

The city is littered with abandoned hotel and apartment towers, and the few tourists that are here make it feel like a set for a near-future dystopian film.

Things in Sihanoukville are dire, but it’s a city with potential. Some of the streets have been repaved and there are wide footpaths with new trees being planted.

It occurred to me while walking around that there isn’t much difference between Sihanoukville and the coastal cities of Vietnam, yet the coastal cities of Vietnam are having a tourism boom.

In this article, I will outline what are the main problems that need to be fixed, and how Cambodia should look at what Vietnam’s coastal cities are doing that attracts so many tourists.

How to fix Sihanoukville

Close the scam compounds

This article will cover urban planning changes that are needed to improve Sihanoukville. However, these changes will amount to nothing without addressing the scam compounds.

Cambodia has become famous for online scammers running their operations from guarded compounds in cities around the country. There are scam compounds in Sihanoukville, and some of them aren’t even trying to hide the fact that there is something dodgy going on behind the barricaded walls. Everyone knows where they are and what they do. The New York Times recently published an article about fraudsters operating in Sihanoukville:

“This underworld peeks out in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, home to a global clearinghouse for money launderers. It can be glimpsed, too, in the coastal city of Sihanoukville, a notorious refuge for fraudsters. Scammers ply their trade from call centers, operating in fortified compounds or on the upper floors of unfinished high-rises.” (see archived article.)

The NY Times even featured a photo of the scam compound that everyone knows about in Otres Beach.

In China, a film called “No More Bets” featured the scam centres in Southeast Asia, which spooked Chinese travellers from visiting Cambodia. Instead of addressing the problem, the Cambodian government banned the movie.

The government are offering incentives to breathe new life into the ghost towers, but the city’s reputation needs to be restored by “eradicating drug trafficking, kidnapping, online gambling and gangsters”.

This problem has since been acknowledged. The Prime Minister has set up a commission​ to combat online scams, and has talked about deploying armed forces and law enforcement officers.

This is a good start, but you have to wonder if Cambodia is serious about ending organized cyberscams when they could send in armed forces today and end it.

Close down casinos

While we are in the mood for closing things down, start closing down some casinos. There were up to 150 casinos at the end of 2018. A local news site that keeps track of the casinos says there are now around 80 casinos (here is their Google Map of the casinos).

I would close them all down, but even if Sihanoukville remains as a gambling entertainment city, I think we can all agree that Sihanoukville doesn’t need 80 casinos.

Reclaim and renovate the beach walks

Sihanoukville has an obsession with attracting tourists by turning the city into a casino destination, but it already has what people travel to Southeast Asia for: beaches.

Sihanoukville has several city beaches that offer different beach experiences, from long stretches of open beach to smaller beaches in picturesque bays.

The city has started to landscape some of the beach walks, but it also has some of the worst beach developments in Southeast Asia.

Victory Beach

One of the worst examples of building too close to the beach that I have seen anywhere is at Victory Beach. There are two failed projects that sit on the beach side of the road.

This beach was already a narrow stretch of sand, so putting giant concrete blocks next to it has ruined its appeal.

One of the projects has three apartment towers sitting on top of a gigantic podium.

This building on the wrong side of the beach road reminded me of a resort that was dismantled on the beach side of the road in Nha Trang. The resort wasn’t mall-sized, but it is a good precedent for other cities to follow.

Independence Beach

There is an old park at Independence Beach.

This park would scrub up nicely with a new walking path and some landscaping.

Ochheuteal Beach (Serendipity Beach)

Ochheuteal Beach (Serendipity Beach) used to have informal beach bars. I saw them being demolished on New Year’s Day in 2018, and they have now been replaced by a row of seaside restaurants.

I like the beach promenade next to the main road, though I’m not a fan of the wavy path. Just make it a straight path so walkers and cyclists can navigate it without swerving into each other.

Otres Beach

Otres Beach was a popular backpacker beach before it was cleaned up. I went in December 2017 when I heard that the beach bungalows were going to be demolished.

I have mixed feelings about the changes here. On the one hand, it was a laid-back beach destination and an experience that is getting harder to find. On the other hand, I agree that there shouldn’t be buildings on the beach, whether that is a mall or a bungalow. The beach road has also been upgraded from a dirt track to a modern road.

Otres Beach has now been cleared of buildings, and local people were having picnics under the trees.

The main problem of Otres is the casinos and scam compounds that are built inland of the beach. They should have built a new city grid here instead.

Turn future development areas into gridded streets with small buildings

The problem with the resort and apartment complexes is that they turn the streets around them into a boring and sterile place. The land reserved for future mega developments should be gridded out into small streets and sold off to individual investors. A good example of this is in Danang.

One thing Danang did right was to grid out a series of streets near My Khe Beach. The An Thuong area in My Khe has been transformed over the last decade into a vibrant beach neighbourhood with hundreds of small hotels, restaurants, and private homes.

This was unusual for Vietnam, as there has been a mania for giving control of large new urban areas to a single developer. If the developer goes broke (which has happened in Vietnam), then the entire development is abandoned. With this model that has been used in Danang, if a single developer goes broke, the rest of the neighbourhood carries on.

There are a few empty blocks of land near the beaches of Sihanoukville that should also follow this Danang model. There is a big block of land opposite Independence Beach that would be better off if it were gridded out and filled with small businesses and locally-owned hotels and guesthouses.

There are still undeveloped blocks of land along Ochheuteal Beach that would be better off as small blocks than a monolithic tower block. These may be reserved for developers, but the government has set a precedent of taking land from developers on some island projects, so why not in Sihanoukville as well?

Gridding out these areas and letting local people build here would allow for Cambodians to share in the prosperity of the city.

Sihanoukville is missing out on the Southeast Asia tourism boom

I was in Sihanoukville in December 2024, and at that point it was clear that Southeast Asia tourism had nearly recovered to pre-pandemic levels. I was in Vietnam the previous month, and tourism was booming. I wondered how many tourists were coming to Sihanoukville, so I looked up the airport Wiki page.

There is a lone flight from KL (because AirAsia fly almost anywhere there is an airport in Southeast Asia), but no flights from China.

In comparison, I looked up Cam Ranh Airport, which serves Nha Trang. The difference between Vietnam tourism and Cambodian tourism can be summed up with these two airports.

I went back to Nha Trang after my Sihanoukville trip, and it felt like it was even busier than before. It turns out that Vietnam had experienced the largest number of international arrivals in a single quarter in history.

During this record-breaking first quarter of 2025, I visited Phan Thiet, Nha Trang, and Danang. All of these coastal cities were bustling with tourists like I have never seen before.

What the coastal cities of Vietnam are experiencing is what Sihanoukville should be experiencing as well. Sihanoukville is similar to Nha Trang in that it’s an architecturally unremarkable city with a nice seafront.

When it comes to beaches, Sihanoukville has nicer beach sand than Nha Trang, and calmer waters to swim in than Danang. Most coastal cities in the world can only look on in envy at the beaches on the doorstep of Sihanoukville City, yet somehow this fact eluded city planners, who thought that they needed casinos to attract tourists.

If you visit Nha Trang, you will see that Chinese tourists just want a beach holiday in a tropical environment where they can eat cheap seafood and drink beer.

In addition to the lack of flights, the other thing I noticed about Sihanoukville was the lack of budget hotels.

I searched on a hotel booking site for hotels under $20 in Sihanoukville.

To make a comparison, I searched for hotels under $20 in Danang for the same period.

Who is Sihanoukville for if your average Cambodian can’t afford to stay there?

While Sihanoukville went all in on casino hotel complexes and apartment towers, there is a dearth of small budget to mid-range hotels.

A beach city for Cambodians first

Sihanoukville has had a sordid reputation for most of Cambodia’s modern era. From being a hideout for Western sexpats and drug addicts, a backpacker party town, and now a hub for international fraud gangs.

In the times I have visited Sihanoukville, it has never felt like a beach resort town for Cambodians. Even now, the government is looking to lure “high-end tourism” to the country, and this can be seen with the latest development in Sihanoukville at Peninsula Bay.

The Peninsula Bay project is being built in the city centre, which will feature a JW Marriott, a luxury mall, and a casino (of course).

I walked along the seafront where Peninsula Bay is being built, and there is a night market with people sitting around on little plastic seats. I went by here later on, and it was the busiest place along the seafront.

Peninsula Bay, the casinos, and all the luxury hotels of Sihanoukville offer no place for the average Cambodian to hang out at. I would like to see Sihanoukville become a Cambodian beach city, rather than a playground for foreigners behaving badly.

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