Crashing Waves & Casino's

ramshackle bridge in kampot
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I (Gav) was dreading the boat journey back, after a travel pill and tiger balm we set off out of the bay, the sea was rougher than the outward journey and after only ten minutes we were in really big waves, we were struggling to hold on. We were hitting the waves head on and crashing so much we both reached for the life jackets out of fright, I don’t know whether it was the concentration or travel pills but I managed to make the crossing without feeding the fish, even Gail said she was feeling sick at one point.

church at Bokor
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We took a shared Toyota Camry taxi to the town of Kampot about 2 hours away down the coast. They normally have 7 people in the taxi 3 in the front (2 on the passenger seat) and 4 in the back so we paid a little extra so we only had 3 people in the back seat for the journey. So when the driver picked up another passenger enroute he squeezed him into the front, so now 4 people in the front 2 in each seat and the driver sat at an angle. For everybody’s safety we tried to get the driver to put him in the back with us but whether it was fear of losing some cash he refused and carried on.

top of bokor
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The main reason for us to go to Kampot was to visit the deserted town of Bokor Hill Station nearby. We traveled by taxi (another Toyota Camry) from sea level up the rough 32km road to the peak, a height 3000ft. Built by the French in 1922 to escape the heat, the now abandoned town consisted of the kings palace, church, school, post office, shops and the main attraction the huge Palace Hotel & Casino. The view from the top was great, you could see the coastline for miles and gibbons calling in the jungles surrounding the station. A infamous battle between the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese took place here where the Khmer Rouge were holed up in the church being shot at from the Casino 500m away. The town now has just a ranger station with some basic accommodation and the rest of the buildings are just spooky shells of their former glory, the best being the hotel/casino where we wandered around its many rooms. We had heard the hill station had just been leased for 99 years by the government and will be rennovated, we find it incredible that the country leases out its most valuable assests to foreign investors with Angkor Wat and the killing fields being others.

entrance to hotel/casino
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We descended the hill by car and jungle trekking and caught a boat for about an hour back into Kampot.