Bokor Station

The Church

The Casino

Ruins of the Garrison

Today was a tour day, this one up to the Bokor Hill Station. The station was built by the French in the early 1920's as a place to escape the Cambodian heat. Set atop the highest local peak, the French fashioned a small garrison, a church, a casino and a radio building. All of the necessaries.

During WW II the Japanese invaded and the French abandoned the station. The Japanese started growing tea up here for the duration.

At the end of The World War, the French returned to Southeast Asia and to Bokor. In the 1950's, when the French granted Cambodians the rights to their own country, Bokor changed hands again.

In the early 1970's, the Cambodian Civil War began. As the Khmer Rouge became more powerful in the rural areas and mountainsides, Lon Nol, the palindromic leader of Cambodia, abandoned Bokor to the Khmer Rouge of That madman Pol Pot.

As the Khmer Rouge took power, American forces based in Vietnam, and at the huge "secret" base in Laos, repeatedly bombed this area. The resulting craters, now filled with water, have been dubbed "American Ponds." Khmer build square ponds. That's how you can tell them apart.

The KR held power on the mountain for a very long time. Even after the United Nations Protectorate was established, the KR held sway.

When the Vietnamese army attacked the Khmer Rouge, one of the places they could not defeat the KR forces was at Bokon. For several months they traded fire with each other from 500 meters apart, the Khmer Rouge in the church and the Viets in the casino. The Vietnamese finally retreated, leaving the mountain to the KR.

The ruins are still there. The casino's bullet holes are plastered over and it is pretty dull. The church, the King's former villa and the other buildings are spooky, the wind howling through the open rooms where the walls are covered with red lichen on the outside and graffiti on the inside.

The whole mountain is a national park, yet the present Cambodian government has sold a huge section of land to a Chinese development company. The developers have built a new casino and are scraping off the land for a community of thousands of high end suburban type homes.

Yet another tragedy in a strange and tragic history.