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Published: August 15th 2007
After leaving Sihanoukville we took a two-hour bus to Kampot, a small dusty town built along a river. Kampot is the launching base for trips to Bokor Hill Station, an abandoned and battle-ravaged French colonial town up in the rainforested hills at 1000 meters. (Two movies have been made up there: City of Ghosts and some Korean horror film.) As we climbed off the bus we were surrounded by the usual crowd of hotel-touting locals, and for once we decided to accept a free ride from one of them to check out a place on the river. It turned out to be a nice place, with decent riverside rooms for $5 a night. For whatever reason the bathrooms lacked a sink, but there was a shower and toilet so I suppose the sink was unnecessary. We got some dinner in town, then came back to head to bed early, since we would leave fairly early the next morning to head up to Bokor. The fan over my bed wouldn't work, so I asked the hotel guy if we could switch to another room. Instead he came in, stood on my bed, and attempted to fix it. The motor would turn on
but the blades wouldn't spin, so he took off the front cover and spun the blades with his hand, which got it going, but as soon as he tried turning it off and on again, the same problem would occur. For whatever reason he kept taking the time to struggle to put the cover back on before testing if it would work again, and eventually he called in a friend for help. In the end it took two guys and a half hour to "fix" it, which actually meant getting it going manually and putting the cover on while the blades were already spinning... well, close enough.
The next morning we got up at 7 to eat some breakfast and go buy some food for our couple of days up at Bokor. We, like most people heading up there, were taking a pickup truck with benches in the back. We'd heard that they often cram in a ridiculous number of passengers for the ride up, and sure enough, the truck pulled up already seemingly stuffed to capacity. The other people already squished into the truck did not look pleased to add another two bodies to the sardine can, but
somehow we managed to fit ourselves and our bags into the truck. Jeff rode in back and I sat up front in the cab between two Canadian guys who were also staying the night. The ride up there was quite frankly ridiculous. The road was built 100 years ago (literally) and is a mess of rubble and potholes and deep puddles. The jungle is crowding in from both sides, meaning that the folks in the back were constantly being thrashed by vines and branches. The truck lurched and bounced as it climbed, making all of us flop around like popcorn in a pan. The constant jarring made the four hours feel more like eight, and we were all pretty sore after a while. At one point there was a sinister-sounding crunch from under the truck, and we all piled out to inspect the damage. But after a few minutes of staring at the truck and wondering if we'd be walking for the next 20 km, the driver told us all to get back in and we were off again. Maybe the truck was tired and wanted a five-minute break. Right before we reached our first stop--the Black Palace--Jeff was attacked
by a huge thorn, which lodged itself in his ear and nearly yanked him out of the truck. He dislodged it and it scratched his cheek and then buried itself in his finger. I guess that's bound to happen when you're hurtling through needle-encrusted branches. Jeff was just glad it was him and not one of the middle-aged ladies in the truck with him, who probably wouldn't have taken it so well. When we got to the Black Palace he'd stopped the bleeding, but had good-sized gouges in his ear and hand. We patched him up with a first aid kit, then set out to check out the Black Palace, which was built by a Khmer king as a sort of vacation home. The palace, like everything else on Bokor, is now in ruins, but I'm sure it was beautiful once. The balcony looks out over a cliff with miles of rainforest, and beyond it is the ocean. We were allotted a very short fifteen minutes to check out the palace and surrounding buildings--which is exactly why I hate tours--before our guide was clapping his hands and herding us back into the truck for another hour of bouncing around.
When we finally pulled up to the old casino/hotel at the top of Bokor, the jarring drive became immediately worthwhile. The casino was an enormous looming building full of broken windows and moss-covered balconies. Soon after we arrived a thick mist began to float through the shattered windows and add to the haunted feel of the place. Wind howled through dark hallways, and water dripped menacingly in corners of rooms. There was an enormous ballroom with a crumbling fireplace, its marble floor tiles just visible through the moss. Various staircases led upwards into darkness, and we crept through each room, delighted to be inside a perfect horror movie set. After ten minutes we were supposed to report back to the truck to meet for lunch, but it took at least twenty minutes before we could tear ourselves away. We joined our truck-mates in the casino's dungeon-like basement to eat a surprisingly good pumpkin and vegetable curry with French bread and rice. Then we were allotted ten more minutes of exploring before we all met to walk down the road to the abandoned church. Along the way we stopped at the top of a cliff, and our guide told us about
the many many people who had been thrown off by the Khmer Rouge in the seventies. Then we marched on, to the stark old church, whose silhouette loomed on top of a hill. After ten minutes in the church everyone else had to climb back into the truck for the long ride down, but Jeff, the two Canadian guys and I were happy to stay behind. There were hours--maybe days--worth of exploring up here, and the tour group got a mere half an hour to make up for their eight hours of jarring transportation. I would highly recommend than anyone in Cambodia goes to Bokor, but definitely stay the night--the ride would hardly be worth it otherwise.
Once the other folks had left it was just the four of us up on the hill, and the true eeriness of the place sunk in. The hilltop was scattered with abandoned buildings, and often the mist was so thick you could hardly see five feet in front of you. The wind howled like in any horror movie soundtrack, and every few minutes a light rain would fall. Despite the midday hour, it felt like late evening up there. We spent a
little more time exploring the church, then the four of us hiked down the hill towards the ranger station, which stood out as a white, modern-looking building in the midst of all the ruins. A single ranger stays there with his family, overseeing the travelers who stay the night and supposedly watching out for poachers, although all we ever saw him do was watch TV, play with his daughter, and drink. There is a communal kitchen and a variety of dorm rooms with decent bunk beds, although all of the beds are constantly damp. We left our bags in our room and then set out again to more thoroughly explore the casino. On the way we met a couple (she was English and he Australian) who had just arrived by motorbike and also planned to stay the night. We directed them to the ranger station, which was nearly impossible to find in the mist, then the four of us (the Canadians, Jeff and myself) hiked back up to the casino. The road wound its way up the hill past a variety of other abandoned buildings, and we stopped along the way to check out a few other crumbling ruins. Although
the buildings are less than 100 years old, the constant wind and fog has made them deteriorate far beyond their age. An old post office was bombed and shelled during the war, and the whole back of it has been blown off, leaving rubble in piles on the floor. Countless bullet and shell holes are easily discernible in the walls, leaving us imagining the battles fought where we stood and the men who fell and died on the now moss-covered floors. Most of the deaths in and around the post office were members of the Khmer Rouge, who were defending the area from invading Vietnamese. The casino certainly saw its share of deaths during the same time period, but it was apparently also the site of many gambling-related murders and suicides. Bokor teems with unhappy memories, and if there are ghosts anywhere in this world, it's up there.
The four of us spent probably three full hours exploring every corner of the casino in the mist and semi-darkness, creeping from room to room with a sense of anticipation, as if one of the casino's many unhappy dead might slide past a doorway. We left before darkness began to set
in, hungry for some dinner and eager to leave such an unhappy place before the night further darkened the shadows. Back at the ranger station, I cooked up a big pot of soup with the help of some vegetables and four packets of instant noodles. We joined the English/Australian couple on the station's steps to eat and watch the mist float by. Afterwards we all retreated to the dorm area to talk out of the wind. At nine o'clock the power was turned off, and we sat in a circle lit by candlelight and, inevitably, ended up telling ghost stories. The wind kept rattling windows and moving doors, and I don't think I was the only one of us to feel jumpy, although the whole thing was great fun, like being around a bonfire at summer camp when I was little. Eventually we all drifted towards bed, and soon after we'd all become quiet a door slammed somewhere nearby. In the morning a number of us admitted having some trouble falling asleep.
The other four decided to head back down the mountain in the morning. but Jeff and I wanted another day to look around and take photos. We
hiked up past the casino to a number of smaller buildings beyond, and spent a few hours poking around and photographing the ruins. One building, which might have been quite a grand house at one time, had the broken remains of a carved stone relief lying in a corner. We found what must have been a small motel, its roof and ceilings long since gone, its floors now thickly overgrown gardens of wildflowers and vines. Around noon we headed back to the casino and saw the day's new tour groups eating lunch. We joined them for some more pumpkin curry. For whatever reason, a number of people simply didn't seem interested in taking advantage of their allotted twenty minutes in which to explore. They went in for five minutes then came out and sat down and looked bored. Considering the pain of getting up there, it was pretty weird to see them not bother to really look at the casino. I suppose a place is what you make it.
In the early afternoon the mist became so thick that we could hardly see anything, so we went back to the ranger station for a while. An Australian couple soon
showed up, arriving on mopeds (which is absolutely crazy and I have no idea how they actually made it up the mountain!), also planning to stay the night. We shared a pot of spaghetti, then went to check out the casino and church, which they hadn't yet seen. On the way we saw headlights coming towards us through the mist, and three German guys pulled up on dirt bikes. They joined us in wandering through the casino, and with safety in numbers we all stayed until dark, using flashlights to light our way through the maze of rooms and hallways. Eventually we all returned to the ranger station, and once again we all sat up talking by candlelight for a while before heading to bed.
The German guys took off fairly early in the morning, and the other four of us slept in and then shared a box of packaged cookies for breakfast. (There weren't a lot of other options--it was that or spaghetti.) We were all considering staying yet another night, since they still hadn't seen many of the other buildings and Jeff still had plenty of areas to photograph. But we soon received a phone call (somehow
the ranger's cell phone works up there) telling us that if we chose not to go down that day we would have to pay again. After a long argument we weren't getting anywhere, so we decided we'd just have to head down that day instead of risk paying another $20 or more to catch a ride the next day. The Australians decided to leave as well, and took off on their mopeds ahead of us. Jeff and I packed up our things and climbed into an old white Toyota Camry along with a French couple who had just come up for the day trip that morning. We were skeptical about the car's ability to handle the horrible roads, but for whatever reason it was a much smoother ride than the truck had been. On the way down we detoured to walk to a waterfall, a pretty easy half hour walk from where the car parked near a crumbling footbridge. The waterfall was pretty impressive, although I hear it's just a trickle during the dry season. We hiked back to the car, then sat through the slow four-hour decent back down to Kampot. We passed the Australian couple just before the
bottom, somehow managing to conquer the terrible roads on their little whiny rented mopeds. They joined us at the riverside hotel in Kampot, and four of us had dinner at an Indian place in town. In the morning Jeff and I packed up and caught a bus back to Phnom Penh, where we would spend a few days before heading north to Siem Reap.
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Claire
non-member comment
Wow
Wow Laura ... these pictures are so amazing.. props to Jeff as always.. Your stories are so fun to read ... they dont make me envious however of those four hour bumpy car/truck rides ... ive been on enough chicken buses in mexico and south america to understand how bad they can be :)