Gambling on the Future
IT’S HAPPY HOUR IN Sihanoukville, a Cambodian beach town on the Gulf of Thailand. Waves lap against the dampened sand beneath sunset beams of gold. Little kids bob on inner tubes; teens take selfies on the beach. I order a glass of wine and drag a lounge chair out from under the casuarina trees. There is something mesmerizing about this hour in the tropics, when darkness falls and the heat dies fast. Another scorching day gives way to a welcome breeze. Right here, right now, humanity unites in its revelry.
Sihanoukville is rapidly being remade into a modern playground for the rich, thanks to investment from China.
But as I glance toward a spit of land that stretches beneath the sinking sun, reality takes shape in the dusk: the jagged silhouette of construction cranes atop skyscrapers still undone. It’s the paradox of where I am—a tranquil sea facing an onslaught of messy development, swaddled in the stench of burning plastic.
The Cambodian coast is changing faster than I can fathom.
I first came to this beach in 1998. I was an editor at the now-defunct Cambodia Daily during a year of historical distinction. Khmer Rouge soldiers waged their final bloody assaults against the government before their experiment in human atrocity finally collapsed. Troops defected. Pol Pot died. Decades of warfare came to an end. Thousands of foreign aid workers inhabited the country at that time, and on weekends, they filled the beaches, together with those Cambodians who could afford to be there. Families gathered on blankets to eat grilled fish and drink Angkor beer. Austere bungalows rented for a few dollars a night, and those with air conditioning went for $25.
By Monday morning, most
