Arjuna Solitaire Hotel, Sihanoukville – Episode 4: A Night at Khayangan Beach Club, Floral Shirts and Neon in the Rain
After six provinces and six glasses of Sora, it was time to come down. Not to the room: to the ground level of Kampong Dewa, where the Khayangan Beach Club, which everyone here calls the KBC, opens every evening until one in the morning, two at weekends. Fourth episode of our series: Saturday night, in the rain, between an LED stage, floral shirts and a Ferris wheel lit up in the distance.
Coming down
Seen from the twenty-third floor, the KBC is a garden of domes. From Angkasa's windows one can make out round pavilions capped with black roofs, set in a dense grove of palms, a turquoise pool lined with cabanas, and a large hall under a roof of brown shingles. At night the same garden turns into a neon drawing: the pools shift to blue and violet, an LED screen lights up at the far end, a stage glows under a thatched awning, and, beyond the palms, a tower and a Ferris wheel light up in turn, as if to signal that Kampong Dewa does not sleep.
Khayangan is an Indonesian word, inherited from Javanese, for the dwelling of the gods – heaven, in short. The club soft-opened on 21 June 2024, a year before the hotel, and bills itself as the largest beach club in Sihanoukville: artificial beach, cascade pools, daybeds under the palms, five restaurants and bars, a stage with a giant screen and a Funktion-One sound system, four private rooms and five enclosed cabanas, each with its own pool and screen, for groups of twenty to thirty. Regulars, the management says, find it has a Bali feel. One sees why walking through Baruna, the lounge: a vaulted frame of pale timber, fluted columns, hanging rattan lamps, a grey marble bar and armchairs of woven cord open to the palms. Further on, Amarta, the garden restaurant, with its curved counter, orange stools, hanging plants and a floor of hexagonal tiles patterned with leaves. By day it must be a different address. We only saw the night.
The orchestra of floral shirts
One is greeted at the entrance by a line of orange shirts printed with white foliage and straw hats printed with palm trees, hands joined in a sampeah, smiles required but sincere. The floor manager, in a white polo shirt and earpiece, keeps the tables and the stage in step. At the bar, in front of a wall of cognacs and whiskies under indirect light, two bartenders in Hawaiian shirts and frayed straw hats give a thumbs-up before anyone has ordered. The uniform says everything about the spirit of the place: nobody is here for gravity.
It was still raining. The timber deck shone, the parasols were closed like buds, and waiters ran across the puddles with ice buckets. A yellow "wet floor" sign kept watch at the edge of the pool. Nobody seemed to mind, least of all the guests, mostly Chinese that evening, gathered around cans and buckets of beer beneath the big fans.
The stage
The DJ had set up her Pioneer console at the foot of Baruna's staircase, beneath the lounge's sign: white headphones around her neck, black hair to the waist, a black strapless dress and a pink plush toy clipped to the deck. A little higher, under the timber roof, a screen of Chinese landscapes – blue-green mountains on a gold ground, in the manner of a Song scroll – lines the wall she poses against between tracks. The contrast sums up Kampong Dewa better than a speech: a Balinese roof, a Chinese landscape, a Japanese console, Khmer rain. She started gently, Mandarin pop and house, while the tables filled.
Then the dancers arrived, five or six of them, in fishnets and ankle boots, each at her own pole of white light planted on the flagstones. They dance for the tables, not for a dance floor: the guests stay seated, film, applaud now and then. The LED screen at the back scrolls announcements in Chinese characters, and the main stage under the thatch awaits a band that, that night, played between two downpours. It is a Sihanoukville night as the city now produces them: written in Chinese, served in Khmer, decorated Indonesian-style, with neon for everyone.
One may not care for this kind of evening; we chose to look at it for what it is. The KBC is a venue for shows, not a candlelit beach bar, and it does not pretend otherwise. What it does, it does with a large, young team plainly glad to be there, which at that hour and in that rain is not nothing. We stayed an hour, long enough for a cocktail and two sets, and went back up as the Ferris wheel was going dark.
The next morning there remained the twenty-fifth floor. That is the subject of the final episode.
Practical information
Khayangan Beach Club (KBC), Kompong Dewa Resort, Otres Marina Road, Sihanoukville, a few steps from the Arjuna Solitaire Hotel. Open daily from 4 pm to 1 am, until 2 am at weekends.
Five food and drink outlets, including Amarta Garden Restaurant and Baruna Lounge & Bar (tapas and cocktails); Cambodian, Asian and Western cuisine, hot pot and grill; artificial beach, pools, daybeds; stage with LED screen and Funktion-One sound; private rooms and cabanas with pools for groups.
Event programme on Khayangan Beach Club's Facebook and Instagram pages.
Next – Episode 5: Sunday, the royal lunch at Wang Long, on the twenty-fifth floor.
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