Travel & Vacation Guide to Bay Of Lights, Sihanoukville, Cambodia

This time, admin Tuna55 will explain a little about Travel and Vacation Guide to Bay Of Lights, Sihanoukville, Cambodia. The city of Sihanoukville is a coastal city in Cambodia known as Kampong Som located at the tip of the Southwestern Cambodian peninsula. The city takes its name from the former king Norodom Sihanouk, and has a population of around 95,800 people of which around 70,800 are in the urban center as of 2010.

In a country thousands of years old, Sihanoukville is a colorful but tragic newcomer. Fifty years later, a French-Cambodian builder carved a camp out of the jungle and began building the first deep-sea port in newly independent Cambodia. Named Sihanoukville in 1964 after Cambodia’s ruling prince, the thriving port and its golden beaches quickly caught the attention of Cambodia’s well-travelled elite, spawning the first Angkor Beer brewery and the modernist seven-story Independence Hotel that, for locals, even hosted Jacqueline Kennedy on her brief tour of Cambodia in 1967.

Sadly, the event came to an abrupt end in 1970 when Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup and Cambodia plunged into civil war. The city – renamed Kompong Som – soon fell on hard times: the victorious Khmer Rouge used the Independence Hotel as a shooting range and, when they made the mistake of hijacking an American container ship, the port was bombed by the US Air Force. Even after the Pol Pot regime was overthrown, the bumpy highways leading to the capital city were long known for banditry and the beaches were always deserted.

Peace returned in 1993 after elections organised by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and for the next 10 years Sihanoukville was busy clearing its ruins. Once visited by only a few intrepid backpackers, guidebooks still speak of bullet-riddled walls, but signs of war are scarce in Sihanoukville today, whose only new symbol is a construction site. After 30 years as a ghost town, the Independence Hotel is back in business, more Khmers and expatriates are taking up residence to run its bars and restaurants, and word is starting to spread of what the New York Times called "Asia's next trendsetting beach".

Ream, Sihanoukville is only 200 kilometres from Phnom Penh, and is now easily accessible via a newly built highway. Its beautiful coastline has been a tourist attraction for years. The Bay of Lights mega project in Ream is now set to become one of the most epic real estate developments in all of Cambodia, cementing Sihanoukville as a premier destination for adventure-seeking Cambodians and high-end international tourists.

The 934-hectare futuristic city, created by Canopy Sands Development Co Ltd, will feature nine distinct districts: Gateway, Riverside, Golf, CBD, Marina, Downtown East, Downtown West, South and Seagate. Set to be completed in 2030, Bay of Lights was groundbreaking with a ceremony on December 20.

The first zone to be completed is the entertainment zone, featuring 60 cabins along the scenic waterfront, a 1.3-kilometre go-kart track, 21 laps, a beach club, paintball facilities, a poolside bar, a sailing club, a permanent DJ booth for rotating international DJs and even a 32m inverted bungee jump zone. The entertainment center is expected to be completed in the first half of 2023, which is ambitious but exciting.