"Curry beef $6", in the aisle of the Airbus A320, the waiter of Lanmei Airlines pushed the dining cart and shouted in Chinese.
Tianjin's opening of air routes to Sihanoukville is also appropriate. When Prince Sihanouk was in exile in China, he often went to Tianjin to see a Chinese doctor to treat his nose cancer. This is what a Tianjin couple sitting next to me told me. The aunt still remembered that her mother would go to a friend to borrow floral dresses and meet Prince Sihanouk in the streets of Tianjin with other sisters. She couldn't remember exactly what year it was, but it was obviously the time when everyone only wore green uniforms.
Before customs clearance, a piece of land advertisement that reads "land for sale, permanent commercial land, 43 hectares" is already greeting you. At the exit and entry, a Cambodian man wearing a police uniform full of badges to look like a prop asked the newly arrived Chinese tourists for a toll fee of 5 US dollars, saying that it would save time in line. When I bypassed him and went to the window to pay by myself, under the dragon boat painting of the traditional Cambodian water festival (Bon Om Touk), several policemen were in the same boat and still insisted on asking me to pay an extra $5, but I refused.
What can 5 dollars do in Cambodia? A 30-day calling card with a data rate of 30G can take 5 Tutu bus rides in the nearby Kampot city or buy a one-way bus ticket to Sihanoukville. Westport is expensive, you can only take a Tutu twice, or get a small Cantonese-style chicken feet at a Chinese restaurant.
In the lively hall, I met a service station selling SIM cards. I habitually chatted with two local girls in English. They shook their heads and quickly switched to proficient Chinese. After leaving the airport, taxis, billboards, and traffic signs are full of Chinese signs. Before I took a few steps, a white man suddenly ran up to me and grabbed me. He asked me in Chinese, "Did I have the wrong luggage?"
This is a day in June 2019, and there are still two months before the Cambodian government issues a ban on gambling on August 18th (think about the day that was chosen). Although there are some signs of unease, countless Chinese from all over the country are still pouring into this small town in Southeast Asia every day.
Entering the urban area, I feel more and more that I am in a domestic third- and fourth-tier city during the great development period in the 1990s. The phone number is either 88 or 66, male advertisements, grocery shopping apps, red and yellow eyes. A Cambodian came out of a place called the Noble Hotel with a box of "Noble Dim Sum" in his hand. The black T-shirt on his body had two bright Chinese characters written on it: Young Master.
At the White Boutique Hotel, Galina, the restaurant manager, asked me what "peach" meant. This is the name of the newly changed store after the Chinese bought the Tamu Hotel opened by the French across the road. In order to have more rooms, they added the hotel to the 5th floor. The original owner had already gone to a nearby island. Compared with the noisy urban areas, the islands have become a refuge for Westerners fleeing the Chinese.
White Boutique is a hotel run by a Russian, with Russian beetroot soup on the menu and European-style sockets. Galina is from St. Petersburg. In 2018, she and the general manager from St. Petersburg went to Cambodia to work abroad.
On a little note, a large faded poster of two leaders who came to power almost simultaneously and now holds power — Putin and Hun Sen — can still be seen on an abandoned building in the suburbs. The history of Russians in Cambodia can be traced back to Soviet times. After the honeymoon period with the Russians came the Americans and some international aid agencies, and then Cambodia came to the Chinese.
Although the French fled to the islands for refuge, they could still smell the lingering smell of their suzerainty. The nearby White Horse Province still retains century-old restaurants and coffee shops from the colonial era. The English suffix of Sihanoukville is actually a French suffix (ville). Xiao Wang from a domestic photovoltaic company is a frequent visitor here. Like the locals, he also calls the beach in our backyard French Beach. Domestic companies come here to open factories to avoid double anti-taxation. He showed a deposit slip to the front desk and took away a can of tea stored here. "Humanity, gambling and drugs are not separated. Here are the most beautiful young ladies in the world, serving those who spend a lot of money." The light on his face when he spoke, as if he was in Las Vegas.
This "French Beach" is an extension of the southern Ostres Beach, far from the city.
When we say casino instead of casino, guilt decreases by 30% and internationalization increases by 20%. Although Westport can also present the kind of picture of a group of people who are common in movies and enter the casino with a few big boxes, but for the time being, it is just a small Internet celebrity who is anxious to rush home from the field to bring goods for live broadcast. Swipe down a little on the neon light boxes of New Macau, New Genting or New Wynn, and you will be embarrassed—with the Golden Lion Plaza as the center and spreading to all sides, the entire Westport is like a giant beast that has only been disemboweled, and there are rolling Road machines, scaffolding and excavators are dotted with more than 200 built and unbuilt casinos. It was the rainy season, and after a majestic rain, the potholed road quickly turned into a sea of mud.
Westerners like to use two words to describe Sihanoukville, sleepy and lawless. Since the arrival of the Chinese, the former word has been subverted, while the latter word is still valid. "Sleeping" is the most important condition for a place to become a backpacker's paradise. In the past few years, moderators of major backpacking forums and travel websites have posted online, complaining that the quiet and beautiful past of Sihanoukville has been ruthlessly crushed by the roaring excavators driven by the Chinese. Paradoxically, it is illegal for Chinese people to gamble in China, and it is illegal for Cambodians to enter casinos, but in Sihanoukville, casinos have become a 24-hour entertainment venue for Chinese people. Beside them, under the gleaming crystal chandelier, stood the Cambodian dealer serving them and the Cambodian girl with the fruit bowl, and what they were doing seemed legal as long as they weren't directly involved in gambling.
Cambodians in Sihanoukville spoke Chinese like babbling, which came out involuntarily and swallowed it back immediately. It's like their complex emotional projection of the Chinese here. On the one hand, they are grateful for the investment brought by the Chinese, and on the other hand, they are dissatisfied with the other side's many practices. A Cambodian girl who came from Phnom Penh and worked in a skybar in the city center said that she sometimes felt really bored seeing these Chinese who came to gamble every day. But at the same time, she comforted herself, yes, you are working for Japanese (the boss is Japanese). She probably thought of me as Japanese too.
The above is just an example, but it still reminds me of the ancient architectural complex of Angkor Wat, which is also a cultural aid. China and Japan have left people with completely different deeds in the story of their assistance in restoring the cultural relics of Angkor Wat. impression. The Japanese are low-key and cautious, and only use a small space, concise, and just right to convey the efforts made by Japan to the audience. On the contrary, China has used several walls of display, like a domestic enterprise running a blackboard newspaper, and moved a lot of irrelevant content on it, disguised itself as a cultural relic at the entrance of the scenic spot, and won the attention of tourists. As everyone knows, how disappointed the tourists are!
The Cambodian girl at the front desk of the hotel told me that everything has changed in the past two or three years. It used to be clean and quiet here, but life here has changed since trucks drove in full of dust. On the opposite side of the construction site, two years ago it was only 500 US dollars per square meter, and now it has risen to 1500 US dollars.
Lao Xiao, a Northeasterner who works at a nearby construction site, complained to me that the local cigarettes are too expensive. The cigarettes he usually smokes cost 1451 packs, and the domestic price is only 45 yuan. There are as many as 200,000 Chinese working in Westport like Lao Xiao at the peak. They all came here with gold rush dreams until the last moment when they were disillusioned. Many of them have become the protagonists of Internet news at the beginning of this year, because the boss ran away and could not get the arrears, and some migrant workers are still stranded in Cambodia.
It is the local ordinary Cambodians who are more affected. Many Tutu drivers and hotel attendants find themselves making more money than they can keep up with rising rents and other living costs. This makes them have to find another way to make a living, or even travel far away.
I often hear one Chinese say to another Chinese, here you just need to speak Chinese. Indeed, more and more Cambodians are learning Chinese. In Prince Edward Cantonese-style dim sum restaurant, a Cambodian waiter said a few words in Chinese to me, and found that there was still a problem with communication, and his face became embarrassed. When I switched to English, he seemed to be saved.
There was also some weak resistance. Because I was sheltering from the rain, I ran into a pharmacy next to the Golden Lion turntable and found a unique sign inside, which read in English: We do not accept US dollars and RMB, please join us in supporting Cambodian currency.
Compared to the chaos of Sihanoukville, after a 40-minute speedboat ride, the Koh Rong Sala Island I saw was a paradise. Although it was the rainy season, when the sun came out, the coast was still blue for me. On the other side of the island, there is only one restaurant in Lazy Beach, which is so quiet that it makes you feel like Robinson. To reach this beach, you need to cross the virgin rainforest belt in the middle, which is another reward for those who like to hike.
I was the only passenger on the return speedboat, but they kept their promise and sent me back. The waves were rough and a local fishing boat was trawling in the distance. From my perspective, it is so small, the fisherman standing on the bow sometimes emerges from the water, and sometimes is engulfed by the waves, but how peaceful he is, for thousands of years, this is their way of life. Just this kind of life, is it about to usher in a huge change?
Change has started since then. On the way back from the island to the hotel, my Cambodian driver suddenly hummed a song. Slowly, I realized that he was not singing, but teaching me Khmer. "Turn left, turn right, restaurants, hotels, casinos"... On the way I stopped to take a picture of a "Gang of Men" nightclub, and he taught me how to say "wait a minute".
"Jiamendei-Jiamendei-stay home," I repeated his Khmer "wait a minute". At night, under the illumination of neon lights, the dust churning on the dirt road shows a clear and hard grainy feeling.
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