Sihanoukville is Cambodia's main contemporary seaside resort, 240 km south of the capital. With a population of 200,000, Sihanoukville has become one of Cambodia's three major tourist hubs, alongside Phnom Penh and Angkor. Sihanoukville boasts several beaches, a number of charming fishing villages - tourist attractions likely to attract foreign investors - and a large number of casinos, which attract many Chinese. Today, Sihanoukville serves as a departure point for the islands, which are only a short distance away and offer a much more serene atmosphere.Developed in the 1950s by Prince Sihanouk, who understood the need to provide his country with a deep-water port, the village of Kompong Som became the ultra-modern (for the time) port complex of Sihanoukville, the fruit of Franco-Khmer cooperation, at the same time as the seaside resort was being developed. But war came and went: the Americans bombed the town (at the time of the Mayaguez incident in 1975), the Khmer Rouge occupied it, the Russians, Poles and all the Eastern bloc countries delivered thousands of tons of armaments during the Vietnamese occupation... and even afterwards. The town didn't come back to life until 1992, when the1st French parachute battalion was deployed.Roads and bridges were re-established, markets cleared, sewers mostly cleaned up, schools rebuilt, hospitals rehabilitated and security assured. Administered with a powerful hand by Colonel Irastorza, Sector 6 quickly became a model (unfortunately ignored) in the sea of incompetence, waste and "je-m'enfoutisme" that was UNTAC at the time. Sihanoukville is very spread out, and the urban area is currently a jumble of scattered houses and boarded-up shacks topped by a gigantic spider's web of electric wires. As in all Cambodian towns, human activity here is buzzing; from 5 a.m., the first motorcycles and touk-touks begin a noisy ballet that calms down in the hot hours, picking up again after siesta and ending only in the late afternoon. The surrounding countryside is Sihanoukville's real asset: the hinterland is charming, with its rolling green hills and sparse vegetation. And then there are the beaches, which we'll mention a little later.Rainfall. Cambodia's coastline gets a lot of rain during the monsoon season, and even outside this period. So find out what the weather is like on the coast before you go.

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