Koh Rong

Koh Rong is a true island paradise with pristine white beaches and turquoise water. For years the island was almost completely undeveloped save for a diving outfit and a few bungalows on either side of the island. Then, in late 2010 and early 2011, a number of new operations opened up, as well as regular boats to the island. But with only seven sets of bungalows on the 78 square kilometre island, it still has an almost-deserted feel to it with just enough going on to make it comfortable.

The island is truly gorgeous, and well worth the two-and-a-half hour boat trip from Sihanoukville. There are seven bays on the island, all with fish and marine-life crowded waters, making for great snorkelling and diving.

The Cambodian government has sold Koh Rong to an investment group based in Cambodia, which has plans to build an airport and “ecological” resort. They began building a road last year but stopped, apparently due to financial problems, so it seems like the bungalows are safe, at least for a little while.

Koh Rong has 43 kilometres of beaches, but the majority of the new accommodation is on the southeast. One of the most beautiful beaches is known as Long Set beach, after the farmer who lives there growing cashews, coconuts and mangoes. No one has built anytemporary accommodation on Long Set Beach because it’s thought it will be the first one to be developed.

So far the development group has left bungalows built elsewhere — after months of clearing jungle — alone. The operations pay rent and have signed agreements saying they will leave whenever they are ordered to. So if you want to take advantage of Koh Rong’s perfect beaches, diving, snorkelling and phosphorescent night swimming, go now.

BooKing Please Contact This number

Tel: +(855) 098 229 823

+(855) 013 999 454

+(855) 081 250 984

+(855) 016 641 777

+(855)0888 641 777

+(855)(0)12 439 292
ravuthtravel@gmail.com

Vigtory Hill

Victory Hill

The obvious next stop was Victory Hill, a section of Snooky near the port. Once we arrived I realized that, again, one should never believe bar websites.

We pulled off the paved road onto a small rocky side street that instantly transported me back to Soi 6, only with more mud. Small groups of old, fat and badly made up bargirls streamed out from their open-front drinking holes to surround the taxi before I even got off. I saw the signs for the bars I read about on the website, but their online personas were much more refined than what I found in person.

When Taa dropped me at the door, I quickly turned and told him to stay put. This was undoubtedly going to be a short trip. I walked in and found no women and no customers; only three bored Khmer guys who told me all the women had, you guessed it, gone home for New Year’s.

That was it. I give up on exploring and adventure. Taa, I said, take me to the only sure thing this town has: The Freedom Bar.

Freedom is to Sihanoukville what Walkabout is to Phnom Penh. Big, hot and filled with broken-down expats and hardcore whores, it’s the place long-time working girls spend their evenings before happy hour kicks in at Dolphin Shack. But the beer is cheap: I ordered a 75-cent Angkor draft and sat back to check out the scene.

As expected, the tryst didn’t last long and, $10 later, she was out of the room again, probably back to Dolphin Shack. I never did get her name, but I saw her do the same thing to a guy sitting next to me two nights later.

Hitting the sack alone, I realized I’d failed miserably in my quest to improve upon the previous night. New Year’s was proving a daunting obstacle to fun. The Victory Hill slut houses were almost empty, the Snake Pit was entirely empty and Freedom Bar was down to a handful of the hardest-core girls. And if you wanted to get laid, you needed to work the beach bars after 1 a.m.

It was at this point I began questioning whether I’d stick to my planned one week in Snooky. Tomorrow would be the make-or-break day. That, and final thoughts and notes on Sihanoukville, are in the final Part 5.

The Tropicana Bar website, for example, says:

The Tropicana Bar on Victory Hill in Sihanoukville has a long reputation for great service and is a place to meet good friends and listen to a big selection of music until the sun comes up. Our friendly hostess girls care for all your needs all night long.

What I found was an empty bar, Khmer music and two fat hostesses who, when swinging by 30 minutes later, also had departed leaving the bar entirely empty.

As with most freelance pool halls, you can quickly figure out the social hierarchy and one particular girl – the one who’s every move was being watched by Mr. Infatuation – was clearly The Queen. Tall, thin and in what seemed to be her uniform of white levis, mid-drift top and a Clara Bow flapper hat, she fluttered around the bar playing pretty much wherever she wanted, flirting with all the guys and collecting or handing out the odd dollar to other girls. She was more interesting than sexy and had a presence that rewarded her with at least one customer a night.

The pretender to the throne was a shorter, more shapely girl with long blonde hair, short, tight and revealing dress and high heels who was cordial to The Queen but was not really a friend. She spent more time scowling than flirting, but was considerably better at pool. Very hot, actually, but if you took her, you could never have The Queen, and vice versa.

Faced with dire and desperate options, I made the best choice I could and had a drink in Safari Bar, whose website claimed was “one of the most popular girl bars on Victory Hill.” I was the only customer inside. I was escorted inside by a hostess who then promptly left and had to be beckoned back in to sit in a chair next to mine. (No sofas, sorry.)

My hostess confirmed what I’d suspected: Most of the girls had gone home for Khmer New Year. The girl seemed pleasant enough and was certainly the best-looking of the staff on hand, but seemed utterly uninterested in doing anything else than drinking $3 lady drinks. She got one. I had two $1.50 draft beers and fled to find something with a pulse.

There’s a big center bar, big-screen playing dinosaur-rock videos and three pool tables, worked almost exclusively by the working girls. At the bar I saw some familiar faces, including Mr. Infatuation from last night, guys missing limbs and some too large to fit on one stool.

Truthfully, by this point, I was more interested in people watching and drinking than pulling. The Queen soon left a young buck, Mr. Infatuation looked even more glum, the bar was emptying and I called Taa to take me to the place everyone was heading: The Dolphin Shack on the beach.

Last Dance

Well intoxicated on cheap local draft by this point I continued to embalm myself on the same bar bench as last night. The bar was busier at the midnight hour than last night with a higher percentage of Khmer girls. The Aussie couples were still throwing powder and water around (to the point that, twice, the DJ had to stop the music and the idiots to knock it off inside the bar) and the Khmer girls were on the hunt.

One particular shark in this dolphin tank ended up making short work of me. Obviously celebrating her New Year hard, she walked up, placed her tongue down my mouth and her hand on my crotch and said “let’s go.” With such a sales pitch, who was I to argue?

Snakes and Freedom

Now around 11 p.m., that was not going to happen. I called Taa to come rescue me and off we went to the newest, and supposedly best, spot, The Snake Pit.

The bar attached to the Snake House hotel, the closest thing Snooky has to a go-go bar is located only about a five-minute drive from the other bars, but is down a long, dark jungle road that, according to legend, will cost you an absolute fortune to go to if you just pick up any moto. I’m told it’s best to have the moto take you to the top of the road if he wants to charge any more than $1 to take you to the bar’s door.

ព្រះស៊ីហនុ

Several hours Southwest of Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh, sits a strange little beach town known as Sihanoukville.  Sihanoukville is home to
Sihanoukville at dusk. (by aokettun)
a curving coast line, host to a number of sandy, idyllic beaches that draw foreign tourists and vacationing Cambodian urbanites alike.
Sihanoukville could be described as a lazy town: there’s not many action packed adventures to partake in and that’s just the reason that visitors enjoy it.  It’s relaxing, rejuvenating, and on the right beach, it can be quiet.  During the day visitors enjoy the sandy beaches, swim in the not quite clear blue waters, imbibe a bottle or two of Angkor beer and munch on some freshly grilled jumbo prawns or squid.  After a day of beer, beach and BBQ, the sun slowly fades and the day time activities morph into the strange and often zoo-like activities of the night.
Besides the sea food BBQ, Sihanoukville is perhaps equally as famous as the sex tourism capital of Cambodia (at least for Westerners).  As the day becomes night, instead of centered around beach fun, the activities are centered around sex.  Sex, sex and more sex. And a lot of drinking.  Similar to most other sex tourism locations in Southeast Asia, those merry revelers who enjoy the young, nubile flesh on display are older Western men.  There are Americans, Australians, Germans, English, Japanese and beyond.
At around ten o’clock the night’s activities begin.  Prostitutes, many of them in the mid to late teens, pour into tourist bars.  The prostitutes are also known as “taxi girls”: women who rent themselves out to foreigners for a night, a day, a week or an entire month.  These taxi girls are excellent flirts and are very skilled at convincing foreign men that they’re in love, when in fact, this is just their job: a means to an end.

There are several main centers for the sex tourism activities in Sihanoukville.  Occheuteal Beach and Serendipity Beach are host to a number of beach bars that are usually packed full until the wee (or not so wee) hours of the morning.  The Occheuteal Beach bars are more popular with the younger backpacker crowd.  Taxi girls are always present, but not as much as on Victory Hill, the epicenter of prostitution in Sihanoukville.

Victory Hill is teeming with bars, clubs and watering holes that especially attract foreign men (average age range is likely between 40 and 65).  When visiting a bar on Victory Hill, you’re very unlikely to see many foreign women, and if you do, the ratio will be about 20 foreign men to 1 foreign woman.   The foreign men attract the prostitutes, or the prostitutes attract the foreign men.  Either way, Victory Hill bars are a spot for sex tourists to check out the available prostitutes, spend the night drinking and flirting and perhaps even take one back to their hotel for the night.

The taxi girls are masters at acting happy-go-lucky, like there is nowhere else in the world they’d rather be than flirting with foreign men 30 years their senior.  It’s true that some may actually like doing their jobs, but it’s easy to wonder: “How do they look so happy?”

Yabba pills. (thai-blogs.com)

Prostitution aimed at foreign men is a double-edged sword in Sihanoukville. The wage taxi girls make from a day or two with a foreigner is usually exponentially higher than the wage they would make at any other job like selling food at the market or working at a hotel.  The money earned from prostitution allows taxi girls to support their immediate family and often their extended families as well.  The downside is, of course, that these girls are working as prostitutes.  They are selling their bodies, a job that absolutely must be degrading and unpleasant.

Drugs are also a major part of the prostitution culture in Sihanoukville.  The drug of choice by many is called “yabba,” a powerful methamphetamine-like drug that makes users have extremely high energy levels, therefore allowing them to stay up all night.  It’s not uncommon to see a drug dealer sprinkling joints with yabba in the middle of a busy beach-side bar or club and then passing them out to his compatriots and nearby taxi girls.  The drug is highly, highly addictive, but allows taxi girls to stay up working throughout the night and the morning.

At first glance, Sihanoukville looks like a lazy beach paradise.  A bit dusty and worn around the edges, but it seems like a relaxing place to let life’s stresses melt away.  Sihanoukville is a strange place because it truly is a Cambodian vacation haven, but it is also a mecca for the bizarre and unsettling sex tourism industry.

On any visit to Sihanoukville make sure you understand both sides of the beach culture: observe the beach bums on Occheuteal Beach and then head to Victory Hill at night to see what sex tourism looks like.  Although observing the industry in action is often unsettling, disturbing and even sickening, it is important to know that behind the facade of a gorgeous beach town, there is a darker side or tourism at work.

What to learn more about sex tourism in Southeast Asia?  Check out Louise Brown’s book “Sex Slaves” to gain a deeper understanding into sex tourism and the sex trade in the region.

You might also like:

It was clear after the first day in Sihanoukville that if I wanted to fully enjoy my planned week in Cambodia’s beach resort, then I’d have to switch into conventional-tourist mode, at least part of the time. Clearly, the nightlife alone wasn’t going to be worth it.

So, during the days, I did my best soak up the beach, go snorkeling and scuba diving, hit the local market, eat, sleep, watch too much TV and try to relax after a stressful, uninterrupted four months of work. But when night fell on my second night, I set out on an aggressive plan to see what fun I could find off the beach.

According to the scarce amount of information about Snooky’s naughtly nightlife available online, most the action was around the Golden Lions roundabout, in the small downtown strip and on Victory Hill, on the other side of Sihanoukville from where I was staying on Serendipity Beach. While there were apparently a number of beer bars near the traffic circle, the one that seemed to get the most hype was a hostess club/disco called Pocoloco. The bar’s website showed a nice selection of about 25 hostesses, a big air-conditioned disco and a front pool-bar area. The reality was much different, however.

If It’s on the Web, It Must Be True, Right?

The first warning bell was sounded by my moto driver, who questioned my decision to go there and tried to persuade me I’d be much better off going to some dark alley for servicing by some undoubtedly too young Vietnamese girls. I insisted and when he dropped me off at Pocoloco’s door, I knew I’d made a mistake.

Inside the large bar were two service girls, two freelancers, three customers, no hostesses, a closed disco and a very depressed pair of bar owners. Gary, who started Pocoloco after previously owning the unfortunately-named Tsunami Bar in Pattaya in 2005, said the whole hostess concept was dropped due both to a lack of customers and a lack of willingness of the hostesses to get off their fat butts to service the few customers they did have. The next plan was to have it be a freelance joint, but the beach bars and Freedom Bar near the bus station covered that market. The new plan was to close for low season, as it was cheaper than staying open.

Gary was good enough, however, to ring a moto driver he trusted to show me around town, thus avoiding the motos-on-commission scams. Taa pulled up about 10 minutes later and, in between dropping off yaba to customers and picking up money from yaba dealers who worked for him, did a fine job of doing just that

Sihanoukville Girl