KOH RONG SANLOEM, Preah Sihanouk — A yellow excavator rolled off a cargo ship docked at Koh Rong Sanleom’s Saracen Bay on Saturday evening. The excavator began to dig sand and pile it up near an emptied tourist resort.
Nearby, tourists clothed in beachwear were enjoying the white sands of Koh Rong Sanloem, and while some stopped to watch the activity, many seemed oblivious to the changes about to hit the idyllic island.
The unusual construction activity on the beach comes in the backdrop of Preah Sihanouk authorities asking some resorts and business owners to vacate their properties by January 31, which was later extended to February 9. These deadlines have been spray-painted on about a dozen buildings and beach bungalows located on one section of Saracen beach, with a provincial deputy governor characterizing the properties as “illegal occupations.”
Construction workers in camouflage uniforms drove motorbikes across the sand when reporters visited Saturday, using the abandoned bungalows of a shuttered guest house as their base. A little away from the sea-facing resorts of Saracen Bay, workers widened existing roads inland, with one heading straight to Lazy Beach on the southwest side of the 2,450-hectare island.
Amid the construction activity and uncertainty for businesses, government officials have been far from forthcoming about plans for the island.
A letter given to business owners in 2021 shows that close to the entire island was given to two companies — Emario Shonan Marine Corporation and Koh Rong Sanloem Island Resorts. The letter says the projects date back to 2008.
Provincial spokesperson Kheang Phearum would only say that most businesses had agreed to dismantle their structures and leave, and did not provide any further details or plans for the bay.
Deputy provincial governor Long Dimanche said the Emario project was proceeding and that resorts and restaurants on Emario’s land have been asked to vacate first.
“Since the contract was signed with the company, they still haven’t started their project because people are living there but the [people] don’t have legal documents,” he said Tuesday evening.
He wouldn’t say which parts of the island were being developed and by which of the two companies. But he alluded to negotiations with landowners and said they were ongoing to find alternatives for renters.
“For those who claimed to be landowners, we already agreed to exchange the location for them. But the main problem is the renters who have invested in resorts and restaurants, and are still negotiating with each other,” he said.
Other businesses on the island — including resorts on other parts of Saracen Bay and the guesthouses and Cambodian residences on the northern tip of the island known as M’pei Bei — were operating as usual with no spray-paint marks as of Sunday. Like in Saracen Bay, new roads were also being built through M’pei Bei, but residents said there was no talk of any other developments or evictions there.
Island residents said another large clearing near M’pei Bei was a Chinese development but did not have any further details.
With a dozen or so businesses marked for eviction this week and sporadic construction activity across the island, a sense of confusion pervades Saracen Bay, along with a stoic silence among business owners who say they’re still in negotiations with the government.
A clearing, allegedly for a new but unidentified resort, on the northern coast of Koh Rong Sanloem island on February 5, 2023. (Danielle Keeton-Olsen/VOD)
Satellite imagery shows forest clearing and road expansion in Koh Rong Sanloem’s M’pei Bei village and northern coastline between November 2021 and January 2023.
Paradise Paved
For now, tourists lazing on the beach coexist with construction workers in camouflage uniforms filtering through the island: At Moonlight Resort, a foreign tourist sat reading a book in a bubbling pool, directly next to a warning in Khmer to remove the pool by January 31.
When excavators started digging on Saturday evening, tourists looked on and then resumed relaxing on sunbeds. The next morning, a worker smoothened out the excavator tracks in the sand in front of Moonlight Resort.
Several resort and guesthouse owners have posted signs in front of their businesses reading “Leave us alone, we have a legal lease … Think of tourism in Cambodia” in English and Khmer. But business owners who initially spoke to the media, including those from Moonlight Resort and Sky Beach Resort, later retracted their comments because they were in negotiations with the authorities.
Although negotiations have been ongoing this week, both business owners and authorities have refused to reveal what was discussed.
The owner of the Scuba Nation Dive Shop, a Chinese national who only gave his name as Kevin, said his business would not be majorly impacted by the eviction. He used a rented wooden hut for the dive shop and planned to move to another part of Koh Rong Sanloem if needed.
But he worried that the sudden evictions and increased construction activity would shape how tourists view the island.
“For the government to develop the land, it’s good … if they develop like a city they will get more customers, that’s really good,” he said. “But they need to think about it step by step, you can’t develop all at once or you’ll break the name of the island.”
Leng Meng, the owner of the self-named restaurant, said she had been pushed around Saracen Bay before.
She started her business, then a sprawling resort with bungalows and a restaurant, with her father almost a decade ago. About four years ago she was told to vacate her location for La Passion, a new resort owned by the Cambodian-run Achariyak Hospitality Group.
When she spoke to reporters on Sunday, a worker was using an excavator to dig the land between her property and La Passion — yet another expansion for the high-end neighbor — but she was more concerned about the authorities visiting her restaurant this week.
She said authorities had come several times since the end of January to force her to sign a document giving up her property. She has refused and at least wants some compensation for the family’s $20,000 investment.
“I don’t want to be against anything, but they haven’t given any solution, and anyway I can’t figure it out [what to do next] this quickly,” she said.
Meng said that her business was just beginning to recover this year after the Covid-19 travel freeze, and speed boats from Sihanoukville were finally full of visitors during peak season. But what disappointed her most was the thought of losing the property and the island’s reputation, which her family helped build.
“[When we came,] no people and tourists were coming here. So my father wanted everyone to know about this place,” Meng said.
Sara Resort, located in the northern half of Saracen Bay, posted on Facebook that “certain rumors circulating regarding the beach being sold” had not affected them and that “nothing could be further from the truth.”
A person who picked up a phone number listed for company directors, Chan Virath and Suo Vireak, confirmed the directors worked for the resort but said they were in Phnom Penh on Tuesday and were unaware of the resort’s Facebook post. They could not be reached on Wednesday.
Others expressed disappointment at the state of Koh Rong Sanloem.
Sabine Brigitte Pankau, a German national who has been traveling for three years, was resting in her bungalow at Moonlight Resort on Saturday afternoon when she heard the sound of a spray paint can outside her room. Cambodian authorities had tagged her room with the February 9 warning while she and her husband were inside.
Pankau said she was “shocked” to see paint across the guesthouses when the couple first arrived on January 29 and worried the natural beauty of the island was at stake.
“We came here for nature, for quietness, and we came here because here there were no cars, it’s all nature and beautiful, and now you see how they destroy everything,” she said.
Influential Developers
Last week, island residents supplied VOD with a document indicating that nearly all of Koh Rong Sanloem was given away by the Council for Development of Cambodia in 2008 to two companies. The letter said that Emario Shonan Marine Corporation received 1,124 hectares, while Koh Rong Sanloem Island Resorts Co. Ltd. got 1,066 hectares, covering nearly all of the island.
It wasn’t immediately clear which one was developing Saracen Bay, but residents, hotel owners and restaurateurs said they had heard of a Japanese company, seemingly referring to Emario Shonan Marine. The company’s current directors are Som Sokdaramonuerika, Som Sokdararikio and Som Somalika. The previous director was Masako Asakura, also known as Chou Darareth, a Cambodia-born Japanese citizen who is also president of the business consultancy firm Alpha International Corporation.
By its own admission, the family has been closely connected to government activities for decades. Alpha International’s website says Darareth “worked for various high-profile cooperation projects between the Cambodian and Japanese governments” in the 1990s and as an entrepreneur remained “involved in the highest level in the cooperation program between the governments of Cambodia and Japan.”
Darareth, who has been named as a member of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s secretariat, has made donations to the Cambodian Red Cross, and she said in 2020 that her company would assist the Preah Sihanouk government in dealing with flood drainage problems.
Darareth was married to Som Sokrady, who helped establish SOM Corporation, a Cambodia-based construction business that led construction on major projects backed by Japanese investors, including Aeon Mall and businesses in the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone, according to its website.
Their three children have resort properties in Sihanoukville and Mondulkiri’s Sen Monorom city, and last year they received a total of 122 hectares of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Tamok lake.
A person who picked up a number listed on Emario’s website said they would pass a reporter’s details to the relevant people, but did not respond after that. A staffer at Emario’s Mondulkiri project gave reporters a phone number for a manager, who did not respond to requests for comment.
The other company, Koh Rong Sanloem Island Resorts, lists Li Peishing as a director. According to local media, the company discussed potential environmental impacts of this project with the Environment Ministry in 2019, with the ministry approving the project and asking the developer to protect mangrove forests and coastal fisheries.
A person answered a listed phone number for Peishing and asked in English to speak to a Khmer reporter. They did not pick up consequent calls.
Collateral Damage
Nget Sopha and Khim Ben walked up and down Saracen Bay on Sunday afternoon, singing out to beachgoers what food they have for sale — banh sung noodles and desserts. The women said they previously lived farther inland and sold food in an area controlled by the military, but were asked to leave two months ago for the road widening project.
“I asked to stay for five more days but they didn’t let me stay, they just told me to leave the land,” said Sopha, 41, adding that the move was especially hard on her 10-year-old child.
“I have no shelter, I just keep walking,” she said, adding that she sleeps at a restaurant on the beach.
Ben, 57, said the pair had tried in the past to ask resorts for full-time work, but they were generally fully staffed. So, she and Sopha have borrowed money from a local grocery store owner to make and sell the banh sung, making around $2.50 a day.
The potential evictions on the beach can make already precarious jobs even harder to keep. The island was desolate during the peak of the pandemic when both domestic and international tourism ground to a halt. Tourism has only recently started crawling back to normalcy in the country.
Another shock — like the mass eviction of businesses — would hurt workers like Ben and Sopha.
“I have no land. I’m asking people who have the land around me to help continue my living. I sell every day and only take a break if I get sick,” Ben said.
Koh Rong Sanloem commune chief Thouen Chantha would only say he knew that Emario and Koh Rong Sanloem had plans to develop the island, but he knew little about what they were building or if it would impact many more businesses.
“You should contact the province. I’m not clear where the [development’s] boundary is,” he said.
Soy Sokchea and his wife work as cooks at the Scuba Nation Diving Center, which provides diving lessons and tours. The couple is from Kampot and has worked on the island for the last seven years.
Sokchea, 40, said they had to leave their previous job late last year at a mango plantation further inland because it was being razed to make way for one of the many roads crisscrossing Koh Rong Sanloem. They had worked at the dive shop for a few weeks before they found out it too was slated for eviction.
“I heard about this [development] but I didn’t expect they would demolish the beach,” he said.
Sokchea said he heard rumors the road cutting through the mango plantation was part of a “Japanese company” resort project.
“We just live here to make a living, but it’s not good for us to be moving around either,” he said. “…I feel so sorry for the people who are impacted in this area, it’s devastating, and I feel pity for this place.”
