Next stop is the Bokor Mountain top and there:
Bokor Hill Station (1000 m above sea level) refers to a collection of French colonial buildings (hotel & casino, church, royal residence etc.) constructed as a temperate mountain luxury resort and retreat for colonial residents in the early 1920s atop Bokor Mountain in Preah Monivong National Park, about 37 km (23 mi) west of Kampot in southern Cambodia.
The hill station was built as a resort 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.
Abandoned for long periods of time, modern infrastructure has made the location easily accessible as re-development is taking place. The Chinese developers have been putting up a huge casino and modern hotels to cater for their Chinese visitor. Prior to this they had constructed a high quality winding road up the hill to make a comfortable access for all the parties.
The centrepiece of the resort was the grand Bokor Palace Hotel (which has never been a casino) inaugurated in 1925. It has been complemented by the villa of the "Résident Supérieur", a post office (now demolished), a catholic church. 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.
It was only in 1962, for the reopening of the "Cité du Bokor", that a casino was established in the new hotels near the lake.
The Bokor mountain was abandoned again 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 the early 1990s Bokor Hill was still one of the last strongholds of Khmer Rouge.
Now in the Chinese investment era, the national park is being gradually transformed into a huge business site.
The place has one great value: it is a testimony of its time!
In the photos, the remains of the holiday royal residence.
Nature calmly "overpowers" what was stolen from it years ago.
PS
The palace was called "the black palace” because all the walls were lined with wood in this colour.
The architecture of the palace and equipment corresponded to the highest standards of that time.
It was the French who built this residence for the king, in some form of "compensation".
