Bokor National ParkSights

Archaeological sights in Bokor National Park

  1. Bokor Hill Station

    The eerie ruins of the old French hill station of Bokor, high atop Phnom Bokor (1080m), are known for their cool - even chilly - mountain climate and dramatic vistas of the coastal plain, one vertical kilometre below.

    The road up to Bokor was built from 1917 to 1921 by Cambodian indentured labourers, many of whom perished. By the early 1920s a French holiday settlement had been established and a grand hotel-casino, the Bokor Palace, was inaugurated in 1925.

    The hill station was twice abandoned: first when Vietnamese and Khmer Issarak (Free Khmer) forces overran it in the late 1940s while fighting for independence from France, and again in 1972 when the Lon Nol regime left …

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