Читать книгу Abandoned Places: 60 stories of places where time stopped - Richard Happer - Страница 16
ОглавлениеDATE ABANDONED: 1940s
TYPE OF PLACE: Colonial resort
LOCATION: Cambodia
REASON: Political
INHABITANTS: Seasonal guests and staff
CURRENT STATUS: Abandoned
LOST IN THE MOUNTAIN MISTS IS A HILLTOP REFUGE OF INDOCHINA’S COLONIAL OVERLORDS. ITS RUINED CASINO, BALLROOM AND APARTMENTS OFFER A GLIMPSE BACK IN TIME TO A VERY DIFFERENT ERA OF SOUTHEAST ASIA’S HISTORY.
Ghosts on the mountaintop
When the mists shroud Bokor Hill Station, which they frequently do, the decaying buildings take on an almost supernatural aura. The balconies built for views of the plains far below now look out into a spectral grey emptiness and the silence in the long-empty rooms becomes almost palpable. It’s easy then to imagine the elegant, dinner-jacketed ghosts of the colonists who built this little outpost of French civilization in the forested wilds of Cambodia.
The cool retreat in the hills
Cambodia became a French protectorate in 1867, and then part of French Indochina, a federation of colonies that included territory in Vietnam and Laos.
Phnom Penh may have been known as the ‘Pearl of Asia’ for its beauty, but it was also hot, humid and full of the noise and dirt of a capital city. For half the year it was deluged by torrential rain. The colonial French settlers wanted a bolthole in the hills where they could enjoy a more temperate climate, much as the British had at Darjeeling in India.
Bokor Hill was built as just such a resort in 1921. Perched on a mountain-edge at a lofty 1,048 m (3,438 ft), the site offered spellbinding views to the Gulf of Thailand. The resort’s largest and most magnificent building was the grand Bokor Palace Hotel and Casino. There were also shops, a post office, a Catholic church and the grandly named Royal Apartments.
However, the mountain is remote and the surrounding landscape is unforgiving: 900 workers died during construction of the resort.
The empire crumbles
Colonial rule in Cambodia was interrupted during the Second World War; France itself was invaded by Germany in 1940 putting it in no position to defend its colonies. Despite General Charles de Gaulle’s determination to re-establish French Indochina after the war, Cambodia moved ever closer to independence, which it finally won in 1953.
The French left Bokor Hill during the war and never came back. It was then occupied by various local anti-French resistance groups before being taken over by the Khmer Rouge, the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. In 1979 the Khmer Rouge used it as a military fortification, holding out in the former casino against the invading Vietnamese forces. The brutal regime was ousted from power, but a pocket of Khmer Rouge fighters kept possession of Bokor until the early 1990s. Since then it has been completely abandoned.
The site is government-owned but has been leased to a development group, which plans to repair the old hotel and casino and add new restaurants and a golf course to resurrect Bokor as a resort. However, at the current time this plan has not advanced and the buildings are still in a derelict state.
