Be quick before development ruins this tropical paradise in Cambodia.
Rampant development could spell disaster for a tiny tropical island, according to George Driver.
Iwake to the waves lapping just outside my tent and the yelps of fellow campers going for their daily dawn swim. I unzip the tent fly, step onto the sand and into the soft morning sun and wade into the warm water. Here begins another day, in my world reduced to 670 hectares of jungle and sand, castaway in the Gulf of Thailand.
After four years of restless and sporadic travel through Asia and Europe, I felt like I’d learned the great lesson of travel: knowing when to stop.
On Cambodia’s Koh Ta Kiev island, I came for a day, I stayed for a week. Plans to continue exploring the country’s coast were abandoned, the scooters my girlfriend and I had rented from Phnom Penh sat unused in a shed on the mainland. The search was over, I’d found it.
Koh Ta Kiev is one of a handful of islands off the country’s coast, sandwiched between Vietnam and Thailand, which have opened up to tourism over the past decade or so. Still relatively undeveloped, they’re often described as ‘‘like Thailand 30 years ago’’.
While most tourists head to the beachside bungalows of party island Koh Rong, or its smaller, quieter neighbour Koh Rong Samleom, Koh Ta Kiev is one of the least visited and least developed, despite being the closest to the mainland.
The 6.7sqm island has a handful of basic accommodation, mainly bamboo bungalows along its two main beaches. They’re mostly trendy, newagey affairs – yoga and meditation classes, cocktails on bamboo balconies – but Crusoe guesthouse, where I stayed, is the most stripped back. Island living pure and unadulterated. For $20 a night, my girlfriend and I stayed in an army surplus tent pitched on a wood platform on the shore. The sea was so close, it would actually flow beneath the tent during the Full Moon tide.
More DOC campsite than beach resort, Crusoe has no hot showers, no flush toilets, no air conditioning, no room service. It meant no more trip planning, no itinerary. Nowhere to be, nowhere to go. The only chore, the struggle to keep the sand out of the tent.
We quickly settled into the island rhythm. Swim, coffee, read in the morning. Snorkelling among schools of tropical fish on the coral reef at midday. A walk through the jungle to another beach in the early afternoon.
My work for the day involved scouting the beach collecting rubbish that had washed ashore, a kind of cross-section of Cambodian life – Coke bottles and fishing nets, a child’s plastic shoe, a toothbrush, a bottle of battery acid. Crusoe gave a free beer for every sack load of rubbish that guests collected, which the sea provided in abundance, and ensured it was among the cleanest beaches in the country. The system also had the unusual effect of turning rubbish into a kind of commodity: today’s rubbish, tomorrow’s beer.
Each day would also bring a new boatload of guests and conversations from around the world, a string of one-day friendships. The actor from Brussels, the dancer from Barcelona, a business analyst from Mumbai, a German life coach.
Soon, we were among the longtime residents, only outlasted by the ‘‘gypsy monk’’ – a middleaged buddhist Brit who had spent much of the previous two weeks silently meditating outside his tent, the sun baking into his bronzed shaved head. A far cry from his life in a van in southern England, working as a security guard at Southampton’s Rose Bowl cricket ground.
Some guests, however, never leave. Nathan Mauco first visited the island while travelling Southeast Asia three years ago, after a year’s working holiday in New Zealand. During his stay, he fell in love with Khmer Crusoe manager Vannin Tes and now spends half the year on Koh Ta Kiev and the other half working as an electrician in France. The resort was started by Tes’ sister and a number of her family help run the business, most of whom were raised in a refugee camp, displaced by the murderous Khmer Rouge regime.
However, we soon became aware that this patch of paradise faces an existential threat that could close Crusoe for good.
In the past couple of years, the nearby town of Sihanoukville, on the mainland, has transformed from a relatively small centre and beachside party destination for backpackers, to a city of high-rise luxury hotels and casinos. When I first passed through the town four years ago, there was barely a building above two storeys. Now, more than 200 buildings over five storeys have been erected. A further 600 or so are under construction, mostly on the back of billions of dollars of Chinese investment (more than 90 per cent of businesses in the city are now Chinese-owned).
Now the boom is starting to spread beyond the coast. A development was recently announced for an enormous luxury resort on Koh Rong, including an airport and golf course.
It looks like Koh Ta Kiev could be next. There have long been rumours that a resort was planned for the island. The military owns the island and operates a small naval base there, but it has reportedly sold off a portion to a developer and a rough road was bulldozed through the jungle interior about five years ago. Little has happened since, but recently, images popped up on Google Maps showing an artist’s impression of a luxury resort resembling a small city taking over much of
the island. According to company records, the development is linked to a Chinese-owned real estate company, which has built a number of highrise luxury hotels and apartments in Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh. Nothing had been officially announced yet, but it seems only a matter of time.
‘‘Enjoy it while you can, this could be the last year of Crusoe,’’ we were told by one Crusoe employee.
Eventually we could extend our stay no longer and had to leave and drive our scooters back to Phnom Penh. We boarded the boat, wondering if we’d ever see our idyllic beachside campsite again.
Back on our scooters, we were soon driving into Sihanoukville. It was far worse than I imagined. It’s difficult to begrudge development in one of the poorest countries in the world, but what was being built seemed the antithesis of what made this part of the world special. The size and speed of construction was difficult to comprehend. The streets were filled with partially demolished buildings and unfinished towers, everything was coated in dust and clouds of smoke from smouldering piles of rubbish drifted through the air. This went on for more than 15km.
On the roadside, local Cambodians attempted to maintain a semblance of everyday life, with market stalls erected among the rubble in the shadow of the towers.
A dizzying transition. From paradise to hell in an afternoon.
But Koh Ta Kiev may have an unlikely saviour. The Cambodian government has outlawed online gambling after pressure from the Chinese government. Gambling is illegal in mainland China, but the Sihanoukville businesses predominantly targeted the online Chinese market, whose money propped up many of the city’s casinos and hotels. It has resulted in an exodus of Chinese business and some casinos have closed, leading some analysts to predict a collapse in the unprecedented construction boom.
But I hope I’ll be back in my beachside tent sooner, rather than later, just in case.