Last trip to Bokor

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This blog is recording a trip around Cambodia and Viet Nam with my ex wife starting January 2015. We have been divorced for over ten years so it should be an adventure for us both

I have travelled extensively in Cambodia so some of this trip is covering old ground, the unknown section is up into Rattanikiri then across the highlands into Viet Nam

Some of my former travels ere written up as travel articles for a magazine, the one below was written in 2008 when I was the last tourist to visit the Bokor Hill Station before it was closed for the construction of a resort which opened recently. We are planning a night in the new hotel up there, this is how it was six years ago:







Ghosts of Bokor



"The tigers are very shy" said the monk "They stay away in the deep forest, if you do not trouble them they will not trouble you”.

That’s a relief I thought, there are at least three tigers in this area and I didn’t fancy running across one in the fog. It’s easy to get lost up here, the clouds drift in off the ocean and roll over the thousand metre high cliff top drenching the landscape with a chill, impenetrable mist.

I stopped at the monastery to ask directions and the best way to avoid bec-*

I have no idea what it takes to “trouble” a tiger and had no intention of finding out.

Not only are there tigers up here but several other species of large cat, there are also sun bears, elephants, baboons and wild pigs. The Javan rhino used to make an appearance here but alas no more. Other residents include lizards, snakes, giant spiders and assorted creepy crawlies plus a smattering of land mines, which are just as dangerous as tigers, but harder to spot.



The only thing which seems to interfere with this rampant biodiversity in the 1100sq kilometres of Cambodia’s Bokor National Park, is the occasional incursion by poachers. The job of keeping them and the illegal loggers out falls to the rangers and it was in their HQ I was staying.

The Ranger centre and the monastery are the only inhabited buildings in this Mountain-top ghost town.

Originally planned as an altitude station, it is built on a vast plateau which stops abruptly with a one kilometre drop to the Gulf of Thailand below and looks out to the beautiful Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc.

Dominating the site is the windowless skeleton of the Bokor Palace Hotel, once beautiful but long abandoned and left open to the elements, it’s white stucco walls mottled with red lichen.

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Sitting at 1080 meters altitude this area is the coolest in Cambodia and in the days before air conditioning this was the perfect place to recover from the thick hot humidity of the lowlands.

The commercial potential for building a health resort up here was not lost on Monsieur Francois Baudouin the Residénte Superior of Cambodia.

A route to the plateau of Mont Bokor had been discovered in 1917 and two years later with the help of the military M. Baudouin began construction of a 32 km road to the top. The road is said to be paved with the bones of the two thousand or so workers who perished in this mammoth task of hacking the road into the jungle covered sandstone cliff.

Many of them were convicts, occasionally one would be buried up to his neck as an example to the others. No wonder they call this place the mountain of ghosts



By the time the hotel opened in 1925 there was a lake, power station, hospital, church, post office, two royal villas and apartments plus extensive gardens growing European vegetables & herbs. There was even a proposal to build a funicular railway whisking guests to the summit

The jewel of this site was the magnificent Bokor Place Hotel, built in an Italianate style with rooftop pergolas it was surrounded by carefully tended lawns & flowerbeds. The hotel would have looked stunning on a Mediterranean seafront, but perched on the edge of this spectacular precipice, it was breathtaking.

Only the French would time the opening for Valentine’s night and on February 14^th 1925 the inaugural party was held. The guest list include the Governor General of French Indo China, the menu boasted lobster, fois-gras and fine wines. Dinner was accompanied by a full orchestra, all this on top of a mountain seven thousand miles from Paris



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Daylight fades quickly in the tropics and by the time I got to the Ranger Station it was almost dark. I unpacked the bike and blundered around trying to organise my bunk by torchlight until one of the rangers helpfully fired up the generator, not on my account, it was time for their favourite TV soap.

Two Australian lads were the only other westerners on the mountain, we sat drinking lukewarm beer on the step as a cloud of insects attacked the solitary lamp. The lads planned to trek through the jungle down the eastern side of the mountain and find the waterfall at the head of the river, from there they hoped to follow it down to the sleepy town of Kampot . Good luck to them I thought, it tired me out just riding up here on the road.

TV over, the generator was shut down and we turned in for the night. I drifted off to sleep to the sound of chirping cicadia bugs dreaming of tigers and M. Baudouin’s spectacular railway.

The railway was never built, the Second World War put paid to that. While the French had been living the good life both at home and abroad the Japanese were mobilising their forces and the quickly swept through Indochina pausing only to humiliate the colonials into allowing them free reign. The lesson was not lost on the natives who realised their decadent masters were weak and so the seeds of independence were sown



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I woke at around six am and in the first hint of daylight I headed up to the ruined hotel to watch the dawn break

Wandering through the empty ballroom 83 years to the month after the grand opening is a very eerie feeling, the walls are mould encrusted and streaked with black water stain, all windows doors & anything worth having, including the floor tiles, was looted long ago, bullet holes are common, some grouped together where some poor soul was put against the wall & shot.

Even in it’s dilapidated state it’s not difficult to imagine the style and romance this hotel must have had. People long since dead walked across this floor and out on the terrace to watch the sun rise, graceful women in long dresses and men in white dinner jackets, the privileged sons of empire waited on by humble natives

Some unlucky punters having lost the lot on the roulette table, jumped from this terrace into the forest hundreds of meters below, more ghosts.

Close by is the shell of an elegant art deco villa, now grim & empty it was the former residence of King Monivong who died in this house in 1941. The Thai army with the compliance of the Japanese annexed three of his northern provinces, he took to his bed broken hearted and never recovered..

The gardens and parkland have all returned to nature and by seven in the morning as the sun warms the mountain with a baby blue and pink haze there is an almost spiritual quality of silence and tranquility to the place

I set up my camera on the roof as the sun floods the horizon and long fingers of cloud slip away between the mountain tops and down into the valleys

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Cambodia gained independence in 1954, Bokor resort continued to prosper and was refurbished in the late 1950’s by a Cambodian company which took over operations. Prince Sihanook took personal charge of the interior design and the resort became the destination of choice for the wealthy Khmer elite

Throughout the 1960s the resort continued to do good business almost oblivious to the escalating war in neighbouring Viet Nam, then in the 1970s things began to go very badly wrong.

The Government had allowed communist North Vietnamese forces to operate from bases inside Cambodia on condition that they would not give any support to Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge rebels, who by now were gaining strength in the rural and remote areas.

Unsurprisingly the Americans were not to keen on this and began secret bombing missions inside Cambodia. This strengthened support for the Khmer Rouge and as the Americans began losing the war and eventually returned home, Pol Pot’s forces grew in numbers and began to overrun the entire country

Pol Pot’s dream was to turn Cambodia into an ultra communist utopia and in keeping with this all forms of decadence had to be extinguished. It didn't get more decadent than a luxury resort with gambling and lavish food built on top of a mountain, so when the Khmer Rouge arrived at Bokor they murdered most of the occupants. Many by tying them up and hurling them off the edge, to save bullets.



Now while this pretty much did for the place as a resort it proved to be an excellent place to put a gun battery should they ever need shell the coast road below.

The need arose soon enough, after several Khmer Rouge incursions in to Viet Nam the Viet forces struck back. Taking Bokor became a major strategic objective and the battle hardened Viet forces swarmed up the mountain forcing the Khmer Rouge to take refuge in the catholic church. The Viets then laid siege, firing from positions in the casino, more than a little irony there. The outcome was never in doubt and the Viet Namese military occupied the site until 1989, helpfully planting landmines everywhere.

Helpful to wildlife that is as it kept humans away for years.

Despite their defeat the area remained a Khmer Rouge hotspot well into the 1990s and in 1994 three French backpackers were kidnapped and murdered here. Tourists have only recently returned after an absence of thirty years



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After a shaky return to democracy the government declared the Elephant Mountains a National Park & wildlife reserve in 1992 and administered by the American Wild Life Alliance.

The area has been growing in popularity despite difficulty of negotiating the rocky track to the summit. I have made the journey up the battered and mine cratered road several times and it usually takes about two hours on an off road bike or about three in a 4X4.

On this trip in late January 2008 I was surprised to find the road levelled and the jungle cleared back. More surprising still at the summit was the appearance of a mine clearance squad combing the long overgrown gardens around the hotel.

Then I spotted the team of surveyors, a quick chat with the engineer confirmed my suspicions that the area was being developed. The Sokha Corporation who are the main players in the growing leisure sector are building a five star resort.

Quite what arrangements had been made to allow the building of a luxury resort within the confines of a wildlife reserve I didn't know, but Cambodia is no different to anywhere else in the world when it comes to big money talking.

The park is now closed to the public for two years as the construction of the new resort takes place. I am glad to have seen & documented this unique part of colonial history before it disappeared. It would also be very arrogant of me to expect the place to be preserved as a curiosity when the resort will generate hundreds of jobs in an impoverished country.

But with an untouched thousand or so sq km to still left to roam in the tigers should be ok, as long as they remain shy





Post script



Since writing this article in February 2008 I have returned to Cambodia twice, both times I tried to get access to Bokor mountain but the rangers guarding the road at the base were adamant that the area was closed to visitors.

I could see from the coast road below that the hotel had been demolished, plumes of dust rose from the lorries making their way up and down the old battered single track which had now been widened to accommodate construction traffic.

Sokha Resorts are advertising the new resort as opening in 2011 featuring a 12 storey casino, 2000 person ballroom, 650 suites and an Arnold Palmer designed golf course. There are even plans for a fernicular railway. Mr Badouin would be very proud.

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