Photo by Chris Schoenbohm

Around 2 pm – shortly after breakfast – the first flyers are delivered by pretty Finnish girls with hangover sunglasses. Tonight’s specials are the same as last night’s: 25-cent beers from 9:00 to 10:00, then free vodka “buckets” from 10:00 to 10:30.

It’s monsoon season, so the many bars in Sihanoukville have to compete for few customers. If one is feeling bold, it will begin its free drinking period 10 minutes before the other one.

You don’t have to move far to learn this. You don’t have to move at all. You can park your haunches in one of scores of shacks on Serendipity Beach and everything comes to you: drinks, food, and persistent hawkers selling grilled squid skewers, sunglasses, and pedicures. And promotional flyers from bars.

The Finnish girls try to sound excited about tonight’s specials, but it’s symbolic. It’s their fifth straight hangover, result of working at one of the bars for free food, accommodation, and drinks.

Turnover at Jam and JJ’s, Serendipity Beach’s rival nightlife spots, is high. A sign at JJ’s that reads “Western staff wanted” is never taken down, even when they have a full crew that night. They never know when one of their backpacker peons will finally escape the gravity pull of this tourism blackhole.

We had planned three days in Sihanoukville, a short, mildly ironic stop as we travel Cambodia. We always try to avoid resort towns and touristy hotspots, so when we do, it’s out of exhaustion or curiosity.

This is our sixth day. We met people going on their second month.

Fire dancers at Serendipity Beach. Photo by Tuomas Lehtinen.

I wish I could blame it solely on the happy confluence of cheap drinking, good food, and easy beach access. It makes time irrelevant. The bars’ flyers have titles like “Wacky Wednesday” and “Thirsty Thursday”, but it’s purely for the benefit of alliteration. Every day and every night is the same.

Even if you lose track of how much you spend, you quickly discover it’s hard to top $20 a day. You have the sea, a full stomach and a woozy head and money remains a minor concern. You read menus offering “happy” pizzas laced with marijuana and the place becomes more than a beach bum magnet, it’s a Neverland where for a few days adulthood is put on hold.

But Sihanoukville has an eerie allure that goes beyond price and convenience.

Though growing rapidly, it still has an underdeveloped charisma. Every available space on Serendipity Beach has been claimed by neighbouring shacks, but they are mostly family-owned thatched-roof huts.

Many have identical beach chairs and loungers with adequately comfortable cushions. Several offer free wifi, drawing the growing legions of netbook-toting packers.

But the town’s most fascinating draw shouldn’t be. On the middle point of the beach, there’s a red flag hoisted high. One you cross this mark, the beach bars become noticeably simpler. Plush loungers give way to foldable chairs. The liquor bottles on display aren’t bathed in colourful light and there are no more signs in English offering 50-cent pints and $3 barbecues.

And the clientele goes from European to Khmer.

On the tourist side, people sit in individual chairs facing the ocean and nibble at their own plates. In the Khmer side, large groups crowd around a short table and share huge trays of food.

In the tourist side, European girls in bikinis wade in the calm waters in solitude. In the Khmer side, packs of girls splash and shove each other dressed in jeans and T-shirts.

I don’t think it’s intentional, but if it is, it’s brilliant: by keeping the beach facilities Spartan, Cambodians are able to repel comfort-seeking travelers and claim a piece of the beach as their own.

By the same token, travelers at once fascinated by the country but intimidated by the language and cultural differences have a place from which to observe the locals in their habitat while safely surrounded by their own kind.

It’s too seductive to not stay.

Lady selling squid. Photo by Nick Amis.