Bokor Hill Station

Phnom Bokor
—  Town  —
Bokor Palace Hotel in 2007
Phnom Bokor Location of the Town of Phnom Bokor
Coordinates: 10°36′N 104°10′E
Country	Cambodia
Province	Kampot
District	Kampot District
Population (2011)
• Total	4,000

Bokor Hill Station (in Khmer កស្ថានីយភ្នំបូកគោ Kosthany Phnom Bokor) is a French ghost town in Preah Monivong National Park. Construction started in 1921 on Dâmrei Mountains, about 20 km as the crow flies (42 km by the road) West from the town of Kampot, southern Cambodia. It was used as the location for the final showdown of the movie City of Ghosts (2002) and the 2004 film R-Point.

History

The town was built as a resort by the colonial French settlers to offer an escape from the heat, humidity and general insalubrity of Phnom Penh. Nine hundred lives were lost in nine months during the construction of the resort in this remote mountain location.

The centrepiece of the resort was the grand Bokor Palace Hotel & Casino, complemented by shops, a post office (now demolished), a church and the Royal Apartments. It is also an important cultural site, showing how the colonial settlers spent their free time.

Bokor Hill was abandoned first by the French in late 1940s, during the First Indochina War, because of local insurrections guided by the Khmer Issarak, and then for good in 1972, as Khmer Rouge took over the area. During the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, Khmer Rouge entrenched themselves and held on tightly for months. In earlier 1990s Bokor Hill was still one of the last strongholds of Khmer Rouge.

Modern Day

Inside the worn down Bokor casino

Now abandoned, with the exception of the old post office most of the buildings are still standing. The strategic importance of the location is underlined by the fact that the Cambodian authorities maintain a Ranger Station on the site. The only other "inhabited" building on the site is a small temple. There is also a waterfall which tends to be dry in high season and in full flow during rainy season. About 10 km before on the way for Bokor Hill Station there is the Black Palace (Veang Khmao). It was a little summer palace of King Sihanouk, abandoned some decade ago.

View to the Gulf of Thailand from the Bokor.

Today the site is beginning to attract significant numbers of tourists. Reaching the top of Bokor Hill previously required a 32 km grind from sea-level to the top of the 3540 ft peak, up an old road that took 1.5 hours to complete. However, as at August 2011, while still being completed, a new sealed road is in use with battered slopes & drainage systems to try & prevent landslides.

The site is owned by the government but is now under 99–year lease to the Sokimex Group who are undertaking to relay the road and redevelop the site, repairing the old hotel and casino along with new buildings (hotels, hospital, restaurants, golf clubs etc). The project was announced on Jan 19th 2008, road construction is underway and was expected to take 30 months at a cost of $21 million USD. When visited in August 2011, the hill station was easily accessible to tourists, but only as part of a paid tour group. The subsequent re-development is budgeted at $1 billion USD over the next 15 years after which a further application may be submitted to create a larger Bokor city, the plans for which are unknown.

References

• Mogenet, Luc (2007). "La création de la station climatique du Bokor (Cambodge), présentation commentée de sources d’archives inédites". Péninsule (Paris: Association péninsule) 38 (55): 179–209. ISSN 0249-3047. 
• Mogenet, Luc (2003) (in French). Kampot miroir du Cambodge, promenade historique, touristique et littéraire. Paris: Librairie You-Feng. ISBN 2842791371. 

External links

• AsiaObscura on Bokor Hill Station
• Timeline of Hill Station
• Bokor Travel Guide
• http://urbandesertion.squarespace.com/bokor-hill/
• (French) Les stations climatiques hill stations of French Indochina in the Thirties, with some historical photos