Tourism Indochina: Sihanoukville is a Colourful but Tragic Upstart

Jan. 4, 2012 - PRLog -- Sihanoukville (Krong Preah Seihanu), formerly Kompong Som and familiarly just Snookyville or even Snooky is a seaside town featuring Cambodia's best-known beaches.

In a land with thousands of years of history, Sihanoukville is a colourful but tragic upstart. A mere fifty years ago, a French-Cambodian construction carved a camp out of the jungle and started building the first deep-sea port of a newly independent Cambodia. Named Sihanoukville in 1964 after the ruling prince of Cambodia, the booming port and its golden beaches soon drew Cambodia's jetsetting elite, spawning the first Angkor Beer brewery and the modernist seven-story Independence Hotel which, claim locals, even played host to Jacqueline Kennedy on her whirlwind tour of Cambodia in 1967. Peace returned in 1997 and in the ensuing ten years Sihanoukville has been busy picking up the pieces. First visited only by a few intrepid backpackers, guidebooks still talk of walls pockmarked by bullets, but any signs of war are hard to spot in today's Sihanoukville, whose new symbol seems to be the construction site.

After 30 years of housing only ghosts, the Independence Hotel is up and running again, more and more Khmers and expats have settled down to run bars and restaurants, and the knowledge of what the New York Times dubbed "Asia's next trendsetting beach" is starting to spread.

Cambodia tours=> http://www.tourismindochina.com/cambodia/tours/
Vietnam tours=> http://www.tourismindochina.com/vietnam/tours/
Laos tours=> http://www.tourismindochina.com/laos/tours/
More details about Cambodia Rice Export: http://www.cambodiaorganic.com/

# # #

Online leading and responsible tour operator in the Indochina licensed as Int'l tour operators,Providing most uptodate Travel Information in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thai.