Still no confirmed sightings or updates on Ti. Please help us make contact.

While researching a solar system for my house, I stumbled across this news and I was utterly shocked. I’m Cambodian and I had no idea this was happening.

The Chheu Tom Solar Complex in Pursat Province is set to start supplying power to the national grid by the end of this month. It has a capacity of 934 MW (biggest in all of south east Asia), capable of providing up to 25% of Cambodia’s annual electricity demand.

For perspective, the second biggest is the Dau Tieng Solar Power Project (Vietnam) with a capacity of 500MW, so this project nearly doubles that.

Honestly, this is such an achievement for the country and I’m so excited about it. Why isn’t this being talked about more??

I’m a big fan of renewable energy and to see it being adopted in my country at such a large scale makes me so proud. This should be celebrated more.

*EDIT:* For those who are skeptical: it’s a joint venture between Royal Group (Cambodia) and CNEEC (China). According to someone who works at Royal Group, Cambodia owns the majority at 51–60%. China is a global leader in renewable energy, so it’s actually a good thing to work together with them.

But I don’t think it matters who built it, at the end of the day,it’s built on Cambodian soil, under Cambodian control, creates jobs, and serves Cambodian people. So rest assured everyone.

This story broke a few days ago in Korea, now made it to Straits Times.

Nothing in KT, as far as I have seen.

"The body of a South Korean man has been discovered in an alleged Cambodian scam compound, wrapped in blankets and plastic bags, his face swollen and bruised, indicating he may have been beaten to death.

Cambodian police said the body was found on Aug 14 in Kampot province, inside a large dumpster alongside another victim.

South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed one of the dead as a South Korean national surnamed Park."

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/south-korean-found-dead-in-alleged-cambodian-scam-compound-signs-of-torture-reported

What is the crime rate like in Cambodia? Does crime in Cambodia impact tourists and expats? I recently told someone I want to visit Cambodia and they warned me the country is very dangerous and tried to discourage me from going there. He said the crime in Cambodia is worse than the Philippines. Is it really this bad? And is crime concentrated in certain neighborhoods?

The full list: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-freezes-all-visa-processing-75-countries-including-somalia-russia-iran

An interesting read by Bloomberg on Sihanoukville.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-09-10/cambodia-s-sihanoukville-struggles-after-scam-economy-crackdown

The Rise and Fall of a City Built on Scams

Cambodian beach resort Sihanoukville boomed as a global hub for online fraud. A sweeping crackdown has left its economy struggling to pick up the pieces.

Women in sunhats walk the beaches of Sihanoukville carrying trays of fried seafood against a postcard backdrop of pale turquoise water and coconut palms. It’s a lonely trade. Most spend their time perched on low stools in the shade, waiting for customers who rarely come.

It wasn’t always this empty.

Over little more than a decade, the sleepy Cambodian beach retreat of dirt roads and $10-a-night thatched bungalows was transformed by Chinese gaming investment and property speculation into a bustling mecca of high-rise hotels and casinos. When an online gambling ban, quickly followed by the Covid-19 pandemic, hollowed out tourism, criminal syndicates moved in, repurposing resorts, condominiums and casinos into scam compounds where workers carried out online fraud on an industrial scale. By 2024 such activity was generating more than $12.5 billion annually in Cambodia —equal to about half the country’s economic output — with Sihanoukville at its center.

Then came the crackdown. Over the past year, authorities have closed more than 600 illicit sites nationwide and detained almost 30,000 suspects from 39 countries including China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan and the Philippines, according to officials. More than 58,000 foreigners have been deported and at least another 242,000 have left the country voluntarily, according to government estimates. In Sihanoukville, that’s been a huge blow to the restaurants and other businesses their custom supported. Now dozens of resorts lie empty alongside half-finished residential towers, rows of shuttered stores and padlocked compounds.

Sihanoukville offers an early glimpse of what happens when a criminal industry becomes deeply embedded in a local economy and then abruptly retreats — leaving behind a stigma that’s tarnished Cambodia’s reputation, deterred investment and kept tourists away. It’s a stark warning as cybercrime syndicates spread from Southeast Asia into Sri Lanka, Africa and elsewhere, creating new nodes in an industry that drove an estimated $442 billion in losses globally last year.

“I just sit here all day,” laughs Pov Chany, a 20-year-old waitress perched on a battered chair outside an empty dumpling restaurant in Sihanoukville’s Chinatown. Wearing a yellow apron, she looks out over a row of shuttered eateries once filled nightly by people working in nearby scam compounds.

She can now go a month without serving a single customer. “There are no people here anymore,” she says with a sigh.

Mom Chork, 53, who works as a security guard along the now-quiet strip of beachfront restaurants, remembers the nightly excesses. Diners would run up $3,000 bills, an extraordinary sum in a country where many formal-sector workers earn only a few hundred dollars a month. Alcohol-fueled fights occasionally broke out as people thronged the busy streets. Sometimes men pulled guns in disputes over women.

“They were always eating and drinking and carrying hundreds of dollars in cash,” says Mom Chork, barefoot in a brown guard’s uniform. “I don’t think they were ordinary tourists, because after the government’s crackdown on online scams they all disappeared.”

The economic strains extend well beyond Sihanoukville. International arrivals plunged 47.9%, to 1.75 million, in the first half 2026 from the same period a year earlier, though border tensions with Thailand were also a major factor. The International Monetary Fund says the economy faces “heightened challenges” including falling property prices, a sizable supply overhang and deteriorating bank assets, with nonperforming loans exceeding 8% in mid-2025.

“There was a real estate bubble, and all these consecutive events forced that bubble to pop,” says Casey Barnett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia. People with “mortgages and loans, with their home as collateral, they’re not paying back their loans.”

Behind the money was an enormous human toll. The United Nations says as many as 100,000 people were forced to work in scam compounds nationwide, while many others worked in the industry by choice. The fraud ranged from quick-hit phishing attacks to elaborate “pig butchering” schemes where a criminal fakes a relationship with a victim before tricking them into transferring money. Some Chinese-built casinos became laundering hubs or were used to lure victims into buying fake crypto, the US Treasury Department said last year.

Read More: How Southeast Asia Became Home to the World’s Scam Farms

The city is now trying to rebuild its legitimate economy — a process that could take years. In early 2019 it boasted almost 100 casinos, and Chinese nationals owned or operated roughly 90% of its businesses. That same year, almost half of Cambodia’s high-rise approvals were in Preah Sihanouk Province where Sihanoukville is located.

Few projects capture the scale of Sihanoukville’s ambitions better than Peninsula Bay, a massive $500 million project its developers hoped would rival Singapore’s iconic Marina Bay Sands. Spanning about 160,000 square meters (1.72 million square feet), the development envisages apartments, a mall, a water park and a 300-room InterContinental hotel.

The hulking curved waterfront complex dominates the skyline, but construction on its exposed concrete skeleton, enveloped by yellow cranes, has slowed from its previous round-the-clock pace. After some initial interest, major retail commitments have become harder to secure, and the 2028 completion date could slip by one or two years, says Chhun Daro, an investment development manager for the project.

“Everyone knows that in Sihanoukville the bad profile has spread too much,” he says. “I feel like it’s not as bad as the news says. There’s still a lot of opportunity here.”

Others are less optimistic. Ny Tina, a manager at a Chinese-owned factory producing wood pellets used for fuel, says hotel closures have cut demand for his company’s products. Locals who made a living with fruit carts or other small enterprises are struggling too. “They were running a thriving business, and it crashed,” says Maggie Eno, co-director of M’Lop Tapang, a local nongovernmental organization that helps vulnerable children.

Dismantling the scam economy is hardly a bad thing for Cambodia. The question is what replaces it. Nearly every resident interviewed was hopeful legitimate investment would follow. Mang Sineth, governor of the local province, points to continued growth in the nearby special economic zone, which now hosts 225 companies.

He estimates more than 95% of scam activity has been eliminated from the city, even as critics warn it is still present throughout the country.

What remains, he says, is harder to root out: Operators have scattered into apartments, villas, clinics, restaurants and even cars. Investigators try to track them by following late-night food deliveries.

The government is offering tax incentives, easier registration and other help to revive stalled projects.

“It is better to say ‘unfinished buildings’ rather than ‘ghost buildings,’” Mang Sineth says, “because many people are afraid of ghosts.”

This was honestly a really stressful experience for me, especially since I hadn’t done anything wrong.

I was staying at a hotel in KPS yesterday and taking a nap when the police came to check every room. Before I could even properly answer the door, a hotel staff member used a key card to unlock and open my room from the outside. That immediately upset me because I was resting and wasn’t even given a chance to respond first.

When the door opened, several police officers were standing outside. One officer immediately started loudly asking, “Khmer men? Khmer men?” ( he said: " Are you Khmer? Are you Khmer?) I replied, “Yes, I’m Khmer. What’s going on?” A few officers then looked around the room while the same officer continued questioning me in an aggressive tone, asking who I was with, what I was doing there, and whether I had a laptop and the one make me so scared is point to my face and he said” DO NOT LIE”.

At that point, I was both angry and anxious. I understand that police have a job to do, but I don’t understand why the interaction had to be so aggressive. Even though I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, the way they approached me made me feel intimidated and uncomfortable. At one point, they even pointed at my face and told me not to lie.

Since then, I’ve noticed that every time I hear footsteps outside my door or someone knocks, I feel nervous and think back to that experience. What makes it worse is that this isn’t the first time I’ve been spoken to aggressively by police despite not being involved in any wrongdoing.

I respect that law enforcement has responsibilities, but people also deserve to be treated with basic respect. Being asked questions is one thing; being treated like a suspect and shouted at is another.

Has anyone else experienced something similar while staying at a hotel?

Like the title implies, it feels like everyone in Southeast Asia is growing, getting better at tackling issues, combating problems in their own countries, while Cambodia just stays stagnant. Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, The Philipines, and even the most of the countries in Africa seem to be improving at a better rate than Cambodia.

• This country has done nothing to reduce the rate of poverty, people are still poor as ever. Experts estimate that nearly 20% of Khmer people live below the poverty line; that's around 3.2 million ish people (nearly the size of Singapore), and some even go abroad to Thailand to beg on the streets. While rich people and their kids are posting super sport cars meet-ups, driving million dollar cars, having luxury vehicles, in the background you see rubbish can collectors and kids begging on the streets. Cambodia has no sort of class awareness, empathy, or any sort of understanding to fix these issues. The wealth gap within this country is so huge, one that I never saw in my entire life before, so many people are barely able to get by while only the top 3% of people in this country have massive wealth.

• The public education sector is still garbage, students only study 2-3 hours per day and even 3-4 days per week, They barely do any sort of learning in those schools and spend extra money to go to tutoring schools instead. Education is a complete failure from bottom to up, just in 2023, only 69% of kids even managed to graduate highschool throughout the whole Country< How fucked up is that? In most civilized countries that means a total collapse and failure of the educational system but over here, it's seen as something ''normal''.

• Massive corruption, I don't need to mention anything more, just look at most of the ''ministers'' you see right now, they are not put in place by the people but rather appointed by their fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts or extended families, nothing ever gets done and they are the same as their predecessors.

• Healthcare, Cambodia does not have an ounce of modern healthcare system, just look at the middle class, upper middle class and elites, whenever they get sick they go abroad to either Thailand, Vietnam or Singapore to get treated. This should tell you how trash the leaders think of the healthcare system over here and how little investment they put into healthcare and care about the people's health.

• Energy & electricity: have you seen the satellite picture taken from space overlooking Cambodia at night? yeah most people live in total darkness at night time besides the 3 cities of Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville and Siem Reap. There's no plan to increase electricity usage for people living in the countryside or villages, heck there's not even proper lighting for street lights on the national roads, if you drive at night it will be total darkness on the roads and most drivers just depend on villager's front porch small light bulb. The costs of electricity is the second highest in ASEAN, besides Singapore which imports nearly all of its electricity.

• Housing crisis, despite being a poor underdeveloped nation, Cambodia already is facing a housing crisis but not the way that you think, we have an oversupply of houses and housing units, that are not bought up because the real estate developers decided to make the houses costs the same prices as real estate properties in developed countries, houses in boreys costs upward starting from 200k+ above while the average income of people is only 250-300$ per month lol. The GDP per capita is only 2.4k per year meaning no average khmer will be able to afford any sort of houses in their lives. Their only option is to buy a small plot of land in the middle of nowhere and build their own house there or be lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family and inherit their properties.

• Poor urban planning, this country has no sense of urban planning, urban planners are killed by the government officials and beaurocrats because, just look at the cityscape, it is a hell hole built only for cars and not for people. there are no sidewalks and green spaces because it's all covered by vehicles and parking spaces. There are no modes of public transport besides buses which spent of their time stuck in traffic, there are no MRT or Skytrains here in Cambodia and if some government official ever decides to close off the roads for their group then enjoy being stuck in traffic for the next 1.5 hours if lucky.

• Industrial Scamming, Cambodia is the industrial scamming center within Southeast Asia and Asia as a whole, I never seen anything like it at all in any other countries where huge building compounds and complexes are constructed to incorporate human trafficking activities, blackmail, illegal online gambling, and scam centers. These scam centers not only exists in Sihanoukville but exists throughout the whole country, in Phnom Penh there are several in the outskirts of the city, in Kandal province there are dozens of them and finally in svay rieng province and bavet city, there is the largest location besides the epicenter of Sihanoukville. Most SEA victims end up being here in Cambodia, and if you're coming from either Malaysia or Indonesia then you would get a warning from the government that Cambodia has a high chance of illegal trades and activities and that this country is dangerous.

• The justice and law system in Cambodia is corrupted to the bones, a guy can go up to a couple's home and kill them dead in their own house and only get 30 years total in prison (15 years for each kill) why and how did you even get a gun here to begin with? , Rich kids can basically commit vehicular manslaughter and kill pedestrians and people in the streets, and they get away scott free because their fathers, mothers and families are officials in the government or have connections. Okhnas can basically scam people by building fake real estate and fake plots of land and even taking people's money to invest in a fake company and running off with all the money, and nothing is ever done to give them prison time. There are many more cases of terrible justice and law abuses being commited which makes people lose faith in the whole system.

• The country is suffering from a massive brain drain and labor drain, Most capable and ablely intellectual Khmers leave their country to go migrate to Australia, The US or Canada because they fully know that the system is rigged from the start against them, they leave to find a better life and opportunities abroad from the university years onward, and who can blame them? while most physical laborers leave this country due to lack of jobs, lack of unions and poor working conditions; to work as laborers and blue collar workers in Thailand, South Korea and Japan. There is an estimate of around 1.6 million khmer working in Thailand, 70 thousand working in South Korea and around 40 thousand working in Japan, while the numbers in western countries are also up to the hundreds of thousands as well.

I can write so much more so easily but I am lazy, these are just some of the things that I can think of in the back of my mind. I don't see much of a future for this country. The country is so corrupt that they can't even fix their own roads, spanning only 20km in veal renh without foreign loans from abroad.

From the Guardian in the UK.

Discord hasn't been working for me since last night!

https://cambodianess.com/article/they-never-came-home-cambodias-dog-meat-trade-sparks-nationwide-ban-campaign

Learn about the plan to stop rabies and sign the petition here https://animalsofourworld.co.uk/the-end-of-the-dog-meat-trade/

One year ago Ti called his family, a few close friends and partner about returning home. He never boarded his flight. Please help us find him or make contact.

I posted this in the megathread, but I think it has wider scope and is an interesting read on the current state of the press in Cambodia, by a Cambodian writer:

Why Cambodia Is Losing the Information War With Thailand

A while back I posted here asking why big ecommerce players like Lazada and Shopee never bothered launching in Cambodia while every other neighboring country got full local platforms. Wanted to follow up because things have actually moved since then.

Shopee now has an official Cambodia site: shopeekh.com. Not a Vietnamese forwarding hack it's genuinely running on Shopee's own platform infrastructure with a Cambodia region. The catch: local sellers are still thin, so most of what you'll find is still shipping in from overseas. Feels like an early-stage soft launch rather than the full "Shopee experience" people have in Thailand or Vietnam, but it's a real foothold compared to nothing.

Taobao I've been using this consistently for about 6 months now (not through a Telegram middleman, direct through the app), and delivery has landed reliably in the 1-2 week range. Way better than the horror stories from a couple years back about accounts getting locked, forced Alipay verification, and 3-4 week waits.

Still doesn't answer the bigger question from my last post (why full local logistics/warehousing hasn't come here — market size, urbanization, no standardized addressing still seem to be the real blockers), but at least the cross-border options are getting less painful.

Anyone else tried shopee yet?