A review of the Japanese KiHa 183 series train that operates between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville.

In 2024 the Royal Railway of Cambodia acquired 11 KiHa 183 series train carriages from JR Hokkaido in Japan. The trains were converted from 1067mm gauge to metre gauge, and a test service began on the Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville route in November 2024.

This retired train from snowy Hokkaido now has a new life in tropical Cambodia. I rode the service from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville in December 2024, and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable train trips I’ve taken in Southeast Asia. Here is what to expect.

Southern Line Phnom Penh – Sihanoukville

Depart Phnom Penh: 7:00 am
Arrive Sihanoukville: 12:40 pm
Travel time: 5 h 40 m

The main stops are:

Phnom Penh
Takeo
Kep
Kampot
Sihanoukville

The official booking site is at https://royalrailway.easybook.com.

I use Baolau to buy Cambodia train tickets.

Tickets are also available at the station.

[Phnom Penh Station ticket counter.]

Phnom Penh Station

Phnom Penh Station is one of my favourite stations in Southeast Asia. The station is in a good location near the city centre, which is how it should be for the main stations for capital cities.

There is a cafe in the station (Coffee Hub Royal Railway) which is advertised as opening at 6:30.

The station building wasn’t open when I arrived, so passenger entry to the platforms was via the side of the building.

There is a cafe and snack stand in an old train carriage next to the side exit. This was the only place open in the morning. There were also some food vendors selling pre-made meals (pork and egg with rice).

There are only two train services per day from Phnom Penh, and they both depart in the morning.

[Battambang and Sihanoukville trains at Phnom Penh.]

There is no assigned seating, so arrive early if you want to pick a preferred seat. I arrived at 6:30 so I could get photos of the train, though I discoved there were plenty of seats available on this day.

[KiHa train at Phnom Penh Station.]

Onboard the KiHa train to Sihanoukville

Economy class seats are in 2×2 configuration.

Having individual seats is a big improvement from the old trains with bench seats. The seats are generously padded, and I would say they are one of the most comfortable trains seats in Southeast Asia (I would put it in the top 3 with Whoosh and the Laos-China Railway). In addition to the comfortable seats, there is enough legroom to stretch out and not feel guilty about fully reclining your seat.

The seats have backseat trays and there are power outlets. There was no food or drink service when I went (I bought the coffee at Phnom Penh Station). The carriages are air-conditoned, so but not set to freezing like some other railway in Southeast Asia do.

There was another economy section with red seats.

The Business Class seats are arranged in 2×1 configuration.

The toilets are what you would expect from a Japanese train.

The Japanese labels are still on the toilet instructions.

There is also an external wash basin area.

The trains can reportedly travel at up to 110 km/h, but they are still limited by the tracks they run on. The Southern Line is mostly a single track, so it still has to stop at passing loops to let other trains pass. Sihanoukville is the main shipping port of Cambodia, so container trains heading to Phnom Penh also use this line.

The scenery gets more scenic in Kampot province. For many passengers, Kampot is the main destination.

Overall this was an easy train trip, despite the slow train speed and stoppage to let a freight train pass. I have done this trip before on the old trains, and having a comfortable seat with ample legroom in an air-conditioned carriage makes a world of difference.

The only downside was there was no food or drink service of any kind. Remember to bring your own drinks and snacks.

The train arrived at Sihanoukville at 1:36 pm (56 minutes behind schedule). Delays are to be expected on this service, so don’t book any time-sensitive onward connections if you are using the train.

[Kiha train at Sihanoukville.]

Sihanoukville or Kampot?

There is not much to do in Sihanoukville now that it has been turned into a casino wasteland, so this service is most useful for onward travel to Koh Rong. The downside to this is that the train takes longer than a bus to Sihanoukville, so it is a late arrival to Koh Rong.

A better itinerary is to get off at Kampot, which gives you a long enough experience on the train while being a nicer city to stay in.

This train travel review is part of the Southeast Asia railways guide.

Sihanoukville is a beach/port city on the coast of Cambodia. From an international tourism perspective, it was known as a backpacker haven and for retired expats drinking in girlie bars. In the space of about five years, Sihanoukville was transformed almost entirely into a Chinese casino resort destination.

I was last in Sihanoukville in January 2018, partly because I had heard that Otres Beach (a popular beach for backpackers) was going to be cleared for development. After spending New Year’s Eve on Otres I went to Serendipity Beach on New Year’s Day. I arrived just as they started clearing away the beach bars.

The demolition of the Serendipity beach bars signalled the start of a supercharged development burst that would regularly put Sihanoukville in the news. I’ve been keeping track of major projects and news updates at Future Southeast Asia, so I wanted to go back to see for myself what has been happening. I returned to Sihanoukville four years later in January 2022, and these are my notes and observations from that trip.

Casinos of Sihnoukville

When I visited Sihanoukville in 2018, a taxi driver told me there were 55 casinos in Sihanoukville. I couldn’t verify that number, but after walking around for a while it seemed like a conservative number. I remarked that Sihanoukville is the New Macau of Southeast Asia.

The number of casinos grew since my last visit, and there were 135 casinos according to one site that has mapped them all.

The boom times for casinos in Sihanoukville ended in the space of one month. Online gaming operations were banned on January 1 2020, and on January 23 the first coronavirus case in Cambodia arrived in Sihanoukville via a traveller from Wuhan. I was there nearly two years to the day since that first case, and there were still no domestic flights operating from Sihanoukville, let alone any international flights.

[The Crowne Plaza Hotel ]

It was hard to tell how many casinos were still open, temporarily shut, still under construction, or closed for good.

I saw this advertisement for staff, which was advertising jobs as a dealer for $375 – $420 USD per month. The minimum wage in Cambodia is $194 USD per month.

Meanwhile, casino advertisements like this have me wondering what time we eat the rich.

I didn’t go inside any casinos on this trip. I went inside a casino once on my last trip and I felt unwelcome, and it is hard to feel anonymous in these little casinos. At least in Macau, the casinos are so enormous that I don’t mind wandering around having a look. I feel more anonymous there (even if there are like 50 security cameras looking at me at any one time).

Hotel and apartment boom and bust

In addition to all the casinos are the abandoned hotel and apartment projects around the city.

There was a gold rush mentality here where urban planning was not keeping up with development.

Serendipity Beach

At the city end of Ochheuteal Beach is Serendipity Beach. On a sunny day in the dry season, this beach looks like what a beach in Southeast Asia should look like.

The view behind the beach has changed considerably since my last visit.

Serendipity was the home of many beach bars which were accessed by Pub Street. All that is gone now.

Some of the beachfront has been renovated, and there are new restaurants along the beach. I was here during a holiday weekend in Cambodia, and in the evening the beach was filled with holidaymakers.

Otres Beach

Otres Beach is the next beach down from Ochheuteal, so it was only a matter of time before the beachfront developments made their way here. When I visited Otres in 2012 it was just a long dirt road with ramshackle shops and guesthouses on either side. I didn’t blog about my trip there in 2012, but I was there with my friends Dave and Lauren, who both wrote about it.

This is what the road looked like near my guesthouse in 2018.

[Otres Beach Road in 2018.]

I went back to Otres Beach and I didn’t recognise any of it. I would never have known where I stayed if it wasn’t for the fact that I had starred the location on Google Maps. Here is what the same street looks like now.

[Otres Beach Road in 2022.]

I almost didn’t believe my Google Map, as if it had moved the pin I had dropped. The place I stayed at was closed but not yet demolished. I peered inside to see an old sign, confirming that I was at the right place.

The redeveloped Otres now has a sealed road that replaces the old dirt road that followed the coastline. Everything on the beachside of the road has been cleared, and a walking path has been put in its place. The only buildings on the beachside are some kiosks that are spread out along the beach.

Otres Beach was also filled with holidaymakers (mostly from Phnom Penh judging by the number plates on the parked cars). I know a lot of people are complaining about the death of Otres (myself included), but I can’t complain when it is Cambodians who are enjoying this beach. Cambodia had only been open for a month when I was here, so there were very few international tourists at this point. The bright spot for me on this trip was seeing the beaches used for leisure by Cambodians.

I also know that building on the beach isn’t a good thing, so having this turned into a park is not a bad result. It would have been nice if they had left some bamboo beach shacks, and just make a rule that you can’t build concrete structures on the beach (which is good advice for any beach).

[Otres picnickers on the holiday weekend.]

I also can’t complain about the new road, as there is nothing good about a muddy dirt road. You have to be wary of foreigners complaining about development because they wanted an “authentic” holiday adventure. I am also talking from personal experience. I grew up in a part of rural Australia which was one of the last places on the national highway system to have a sealed road. It was a hellscape when it rained, with trucks getting bogged up to their axles in mud (though it was good when we couldn’t go to school ). Me complaining about the roads of Otres being sealed would be like me listening to some Sydneysiders arriving at our place and complaining that it is not an authentic outback travel experience anymore because the roads are now paved.

That is not to say that there aren’t grievances to be had about the Otres redevelopment. It is on the other side of the road where all the trouble is. Like that eighties movie, there is big trouble in Little China. There is a new city is being built from nothing that is supposed to look something like this…

This is called KB Central, though there is not much information about it. In the image, you can see a greyed-out building near the beach. This is the big blue building that stands out from everywhere called Golden Sun Sky Casino & Hotel.

If you look at the KB Central image again, you can see rows of apartment blocks of the same size. This is known as The China Project and is shown on Google Maps as China Town. This is where things start getting evil. The apartment complex has been sealed off, with guarded gates at each entry. Foreign nationals have been held here to carry out various illegal activities, which I wrote about in my Sihanoukville construction report.

[Chinatown Compound at Otres Beach.]

One last observation about Otres is that they have built a new pier at the beach. This will ferry people to the future redeveloped Koh Rong. There is even a helipad here, presumably for so-called “high-end tourists” (the most eye-rollingly overused phrase by tourism boards in Southeast Asia).

[New Otres Pier.]

Cafes

As a non-drinker, the demise of Pub Street didn’t affect my stay here. I thought though that there would at least be a few cafes to hang out in. After all, there are some great cafes in Siem Reap and Battambang, so surely there would be some worthy cafes here. There was not much to choose from, and I ended up spending most of my cafe time at Doi Chaang. I have seen this cafe chain in Thailand but I had never been, so I was grateful to have this to go to. I enjoyed its location in one of the beach kiosks.

And I also ended up at Starbucks at the Prince Mall, which seemed to be the most appropriate place to be for the New Sihanoukville experience.

I was here for four days, so this lack of cafe variety was felt. I would have been quite happy to have a branch of Brown Coffee, which is a great cafe from Phnom Penh that has since grown into a national chain. I noticed that they were building a new cafe at Otres Beach. A Brown Cafe might be the start of New Otres. Who knows, maybe in 10 years’ time the new beach road is going to be lined with hipster cafes and it will be one of the top 10 places on Nomad List, populated by Gen Zedders from India who don’t care to hear the wailings of an ageing Gen X backpacker.

Where to for Sihanoukville?

If I was in charge of this town (a phrase I say to myself too often), I would just get rid of all the casinos. All of them. It just brings crime and misery, and it doesn’t need this as an enticement to bring people here. It’s in a naturally beautiful location, so having a pleasant city by the sea is going to be enough of an incentive to bring people here. Look at Da Nang as an example, which doesn’t have a casino (yet). Turning this into a casino haven just reeks of having no self-esteem, thinking that no one would want to come here otherwise.

Onwards to Koh Rong

The train to Sihanoukville was not operating when I visited, so I got a minivan from Phnom Penh. The last time I got a minivan in Cambodia I said never again. I am putting this in writing to remind future me to never take the minivan to Sihanoukville again.

The van was filled with European backpackers more than half my age. They were all cheerfully recounting their drunken escapades from the night before, while I was crammed in my little seat with my knees around my ears and mumbling like Roger Murtaugh (a meme that wouldn’t have made sense to most people in the van). Everyone in the van got out at the ferry port, and I was the one weirdo who was staying in Sihanoukville (and for four days!)

It used to be that Sihanoukville was a genuine stop on the banana pancake trail. The word is definitely out that Sihanoukville is not a place to visit, with sites like Intrepid Travel and Rusty Compass no longer recommending it. As Travelfish puts it with thier half-star review, “To reach heaven one must pass through hell“. In this case, heaven is Koh Rong, which is where I would go next.

[Boat to Koh Rong.]

“Guess how many casinos are in Sihanoukville”, my taxi driver asked as we drove from the train station.

“20”, I said with confidence. I had read a news report about it recently and I felt certain with my answer, even though it seemed like a ridiculously high number.

“55”, he said.

I don’t know if that’s correct, and I haven’t been able to find an updated list. There are definitely more than 20, and I’ve heard of plans for over 100. Whatever the case, Sihanoukville is transforming, and it is being driven primarily by Chinese money.

My last visit to Sihanoukville was in 2012, and at that point, it was known for being a refuge for western drug addicts and sexpats, Russian mafia, and for backpackers heading to the nearby islands. That element is still there, but now it is mixed in with the new element of casino tourists.

It’s illegal for Cambodians to gamble in casinos in Cambodia, so these casinos are primarily for the Chinese market. Most of the casinos here have Chinese signage and names.

To get an idea of where visitors are coming from I checked the wiki page of the airport. Sihanoukville Airport has been expanding its international connections, with AirAsia finally adding Sihanoukville to its network in August 2017. Most of the flights though are from China, including two airlines that operate a Sihanoukville-Macau service.

Other destinations from China include Chengdu, Wuhan, Wuxi, and Hong Kong. The most randomly wonderful route is Sihanoukville to Palau with Lanmei Airlines. If I go to Palau I may return to Southeast Asia this way.

Casinos of Sihanoukville

Macau is often referred to as “Vegas of the East“, even though it has long surpassed Vegas in terms of gambling revenue. Macau is now the yardstick for cities in Asia that aspire to be a gambling hub, and Sihanoukville is seizing the opportunity to be “The Macau of Southeast Asia”.

I figured I should at least visit one casino while I was here. I saw the “New Macau Casino”, which seemed the most appropriately named establishment for this trip. I planned my day to visit the beach and then go back to my hotel to hose myself down and put on long pants and a shirt. I needn’t have bothered, as when I arrived there was a group of guys in shorts and flip-flops.

I had my camera with me which set off the metal detectors. The staff at the front desk turned around and gasped at me. It was a small casino so it wasn’t like I could wander around without looking lost. I did a loop of the small gaming floor and left before I choked on the cigarette fumes.

The casinos in Sihanoukville are more like the ones that can be found at the dusty border towns of Poipet and Bavet, opposite Thailand and Vietnam. There are no brand casinos here, so you won’t see The Sands, The Venetian, and other famous names that have set up in Macau.

At this point Sihanoukville is still in brand knock-off stage. I saw one sign promoting the New MGM, which has a lion logo suspiciously resembling the old MGM. And I’m sure this Casino Royal 007 is not a part of the Bond film empire.

I did a double-take when I saw the WM Hotel & Casino, which has stylised their “W” in exactly the same way as the W Hotel.

Many of the casinos look like they have been added to an existing hotel.

And if you think that 55 is a lot of casinos, many of them are so small that you could fit 55 of these into one Macau mega casino.

When I heard that Sihanoukville was being touted as the new Macau, I had visions of a modern city being built alongside the new casinos. The main problem for Sihanoukville is that all this money is going into building casinos and resorts and nothing else. There are no shopping malls yet or any other touristic diversions away from the beach.

Apart from a few lonely duty free shops there is not many places to spend your winnings. And even though luxury apartments and hotels are going up, outside it’s still old Sihanoukville with its broken footpaths and rubbish on the side of the road. At least Macau has a UNESCO World Heritage old town and shops.

A far better plan for Sihanoukville would be to develop it as a modern seaside city with less reliance on casinos. At this point there is no point in trying to compete with Macau with glitzy casinos. Instead, promote Sihanoukville as a tropical city set on a white sandy beach. The blue skies alone are enough to entice anyone away from a dreary grey Chinese winter. Sihanoukville can still have casinos, but why not in one section of the city and not on every beach.

Chinese Food

An unintended consequence of the Chinese casino boom is the proliferation of Chinese food. Just as the expat bars along the beach serve western comfort food like hamburgers and pizzas, now there are restaurants serving Chinese comfort food. I found a row of shops selling Shaxian County snacks and Xi’an cold noodles.

I’ve had Xi’an cold noodles in Shaanxi so I had to try this here. I sat down and I was presented a menu in Chinese. I pointed to the sign outside that I wanted Xi’an cold noodles, and the waiter told me to “speak English please”. My Australian accent must have been thick that day. He then said “soup” and I nodded, and then “spicy”, and I nodded again. I got a bowl of soup which was not cold noodles of the Xi’an variety. It was still better than getting a burger on Pub Street.

Outside one of the construction sites I found a mobile dim sum stand.

The vendor was outside one of the biggest casinos, like kebab and hot dog stands that stalk night clubs in Australia.

If there is going to be dim sum baskets steaming on every corner then I, for one, welcome our new Chinese casino overlords.

The last days of Otres Beach

At the southern end of Sihanoukville is Otres Beach, which is famous for its backpacker/hippy vibe. Part of my reason to visit Sihanoukville was to see Otres before it’s redeveloped. I had heard that construction sites were setting up so I didn’t know what to expect.

I was happy to find that Otres is still lined with casual beach huts and bamboo bungalows built in the sand.

The main road is still a dirt track with little family shops among the guesthouses.

And there are still cows wandering along the road.

At the end of Otres there is just sand and some trees along the beach. I was here on New Years Eve and the beach was filled with locals who brought their own food and entertainment (ie karaoke machines).

From Otres Beach a construction site is visible at the far end so I walked down to have a look. The site is the size of a small town, and it’s said to be a casino and resort development (I haven’t found a link for it yet).

In front of this block is a massive empty beachfront lot which has been linked to Jack Ma from Alibaba. There has been no confirmation of this story, but the speculation sent surrounding property prices soaring.

With developments at either end of Otres it’s only a matter of time before the last coconut is served in a bamboo shack on the beach.

Meanwhile it appears like I caught the last days Ou Chheuteal Beach, which is the beach closest to the centre of the city. Ou Chheuteal is the home of the bars and nightclubs of Pub Street.

A few days after I left many of the bars were closed and demolished in preparation for an unnamed redevelopment project.

So that’s the current state of Sihanoukville. I’ve still yet to visit the islands off the coast, so maybe I’ll come back and see that it really has become the new Macau of Southeast Asia.

The railway line from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville was reopened for passenger services in 2016 after 14 years of being out of action.

I’ve been to Phnom Penh numerous times and I have always admired the old train station, hoping that one day that train services would resume. If you want to ride the only railway in Cambodia (as of 2018) then here is what to expect.

[Phnom Penh Royal Railway Station.]

Phnom Penh – Sihanoukville timetable

I’ve been wanting to do this trip since the line reopened but I had never timed my travels right. The train only runs on the weekend, starting with a Friday afternoon service from Phnom Penh, and finishing with a Monday morning service from Sihanoukville.

The train takes 7 hours so I wasn’t keen on getting the 15.00 Friday service. Instead I got the 7.00 service from Phnom Penh. There is a 7.00 and 16.00 service on Saturday and Sunday from both directions

From what I have read it is a popular service so I don’t know why it isn’t daily. There are freight trains running during the week but that isn’t a problem in other countries operating a single line railway.

How to buy tickets

I originally made a booking on the Royal Railway website, under “Passenger service > E-booking”. I inputed my details on this form but I never got an email confirmation. It didn’t take any payment details either, so I wasn’t confident my booking was made.

Fortunately I was in Phnom Penh a few days before my planned travel day. I went to the ticket office on Thursday morning and they said that the train was already sold out. I said that I made a booking online though never got a confirmation. They went away and then came back with a ticket for me. I didn’t give them my name so I have no idea how that worked.

The weekend I was travelling was the New Years weekend, so it might have been busier than usual. Either way I would not risk just showing up and expecting a ticket on the day.

If you don’t have the luxury of being in Phnom Penh first I would book online with Baolau to guarantee a seat via a more user-friendly booking service.

Departing Phnom Penh

I got the 7.00 service so I arrived earlier to get coffee. There is a good coffee stand in the station, and also a Tous Les Jours Bakery at the service station opposite the station. I stayed at Hotel Zing, which is a good budget hotel about 5 minutes walk from the station.

The passenger train also carries cars and motorbikes if you can’t be bothered driving to Sihanoukville.

Inside the carriages

The carriages were renovated in conjunction with the relaunch of the service. The seats are bench-style with two benches facing each other.

It’s a bit tight for my liking, and awkward to have to look at other passengers the whole way. At least I had a good group of seatmates who spoke English and chatted.

I wandered along the carriages and saw that other carriages were set up in a metro commuter style. I’m glad they didn’t sell me one of the standing room only seats.

And most importantly I checked the toilet to find a clean western-style toilet.

The train felt like being in a big floating lounge room with cushy seats, carpet floor, curtains, and framed pictures. The air conditioning is also household air conditioning units, and crucially it was set at a comfortable temperature. Trains and buses in Southeast Asia usually have airconditioning set to freezing, so this was a comfortable ride.

There is a kitchen at the end of the train serving drinks and instant noodles.

And the view outside is pretty good too.

[Room with a view.]

Stop at Takao

After 2 hours the train arrived at Takao, and there it stopped for a 10 minute break.

[Takao Station.]

Everyone gets out for a food and drink before continuing the journey.

[Stock up on your meat-on-a-stick snack requirements here.]

Stop at Kampot

The next stop is at Kampot, where there was another convenience break. If you haven’t been to Kampot you should definitely add that to your Cambodia travel plans. It’s too bad that there isn’t a regular service for this route.

[Kampot Station.]

I got out for an iced coffee.

[Kampot coffee lady.]

Arriving at Sihanoukville

The golden beaches of Sihanoukville finally come into view.

[Beaches of Sihanoukville through the window.]

After a long day on the train we arrive at Sihanoukville Station.

[Sihanoukville Station.]

Total travel time

The scheduled travel time is a whopping 7 hours. By comparison you can get to Sihanoukville by van in about 4-5 hours. The Southern Line from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville City is 264 km, so the average speed is about 38km/h.

This trip took 7.5 hours:

Depart Phnom Penh 7.03
Arrive Takao 10.08
Depart Takao 10.18
Arrive Kampot 12.17
Depart Kampot 12.30
Arrive Sihanoukville 14.42

The train stopped a few times in the middle of nowhere, which added the half an hour to the scheduled travel time.

[A bemused cow wondering why we had stopped where we did. I was wondering that too.]

I haven’t found a good explanation why the train is so slow. The track is completely refurbished so it is comparable with the 1-metre gauge tracks of Thailand.

Even though it’s much slower than the van or bus, it was a far more enjoyable journey. If you are on holiday and not in a hurry then this should be the preferred way to travel.

[Delightful Southern Cambodia.]

I hope that they can sort out the train speeds in the future as this should be a daily service that is covered in 3 hours.

A review of the service when it reopened said the train took 6½ hours, with a reduction of two hours expected. At least it beats the days when the train needed armed guards in the 1990’s.

There are now plans to build a faster railway. Read more about future Cambodian railways.

Book your Phnom-Penh – Sihanoukville train tickets here.

Read more about the railways of Southeast Asia and world train travel.