Thanks to David Bowie for the title.
Back in Feb I sent some photos to a friend who no longer lives here. He wanted to know if SV had changed. The answer was yes – development continued unabated. I sent him an update the other day. As these photos from Feb. and August show, SV continues to grow at an alarming rate. If this continues, in a few years, it will have lost its rainy season village feel and have become a metropolitan showcase city for Cambodia.
Besides buildings, there has been a population explosion and it has become a favorite weekend destination for middle class Cambodians from Phnom Penh. This has resulted in an exponential increase in traffic. We now have 5 sets of traffic lights vs none 1 year ago. In an effort to get people to actually stop at the lights, the police regularly patrol random areas. They have become very clever about this. At first, anybody who didn’t want to stop when they were flagged down just speeded up and went on their way. Now they can’t get away with this, since the police are on both sides of the lights: if someone races past the police on one side, they just block their progress on the other.
Personally, I’m in favor of stopping at lights, having to wear helmets, etc., but when the govt. imposed a very expensive registration fee amounting to several months pay for most motodops and laborers, they protested. I wish I had photos of that. At least 500 motorbikes convened at the municipal court and staged a peaceful protest. The riot police came, but to their credit did nothing because nothing needed to be done. The protesters made their point and then departed.
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, except for these last couple. Luna and I had a great time riding around town on our motorbike taking pictures. I was having trouble finding a good view of the new bungalows at Sokha resort, so we stopped and went exploring and found this wonderful, tranquil spot. We spent some time there exploring until we went home via the now big road that leads to what will be possibly Sihanoukville’s biggest development – Pearl City. Back in Feb. I was still riding my bike down the narrow track that was my shortcut to the beach and was wondering why they were making a solitary building on the nearby land. Well, only six months later, what looked like it was going to be a home is the showroom for the development and work on the shopping center is flying along. This last picture is the billboard for the project.
