As the Christmas season blossoms, Sihanoukville has turned into a madhouse. The hotels and guest houses are mostly full and we are still a week away from the peak holiday season that is sure to come. For the big western holidays, Christmas and New Years, many members of the NGO community and expats in Phnom Penh will come to the beach to enjoy the sun and sand with their families and friends. Many Cambodians from Cambodia’s growing middle class also come to the beach regularly, adding to the holiday craze even more.

Sihanoukville is fast becoming a top tourist destination in Asia with a transition from backpackers, flash packers and meat packers to more mainstream tour groups and self-directed tourists. With the airport scheduled to open soon, more and more visitors will come to Cambodia and Sihanoukville for the cheap prices and atmosphere you used to find in Thailand 30 years ago.

The promise of the coming year seems to have finally arrived here in Sihanoukville, as many thought this beach resort town would take off years ago, but with little government support and repeated missed deadlines for the airport’s opening, it’s never quite struck its stride. Also scheduled, but now cancelled, was a golf course complex, which many felt in conjunction with the airport, would bring many healthy tourists to Sihanoukville. Another route for tourists to come to the city is the cruise ships, which do come, but people who get off the cruise ships are diverted to only a couple of places, or even bused and flown from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap for an overnight trip to Angkor Wat, so its impact is, for all intents and purposes, nil to the people who live and work in Sihanoukville. Even the local guides who service the boats are brought in from Phnom Penh.

An additional burden will be placed on housing and infrastructure next year as oil companies begin to prepare for full-scale production. Sihanoukville is Cambodia’s only deep-water port, so by default it will be the center of the oil industry’s efforts here in Cambodia.