Bokor Palace Hotel, 2007

Bokor Hill Station is an abandoned French town built in 1922 high upon Bokor Hill, just outside the town of Kampot, southern Cambodia. It was used as the location for the 2002 film, City of Ghosts and the 2004 Film R-Point. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 800 × 533 pixelsFull resolution (3456 × 2304 pixel, file size: 2. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 800 × 533 pixelsFull resolution (3456 × 2304 pixel, file size: 2. ... Kampot is a city in Cambodia. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... City of Ghosts is a 2002 drama film co-written, directed by and starring Matt Dillon, about a con artist who must go to Cambodia to collect his share in money collected from an insurance scam. ... shelby was here 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... R-Point film poster R-Point (알 포인트) is a 2004 Korean war/horror film written and directed by Gong Su-chang and starring Gam Woo-seong and Son Byung-ho. ...

History

The town was built as a resort by the colonial French settlers to offer an escape from the humidity and general insanity of Phnom Penh. The centrepiece of the resort was the grand Bokor Palace Hotel & Casino, complemented by shops, a post office, a church and the Royal Apartments. For those who wish to see something other than the hustle and bustle of Phnom Penh and the breathtaking Angkor Wat, Bokor is an excellent third option for a sightseeing adventure in Cambodia. It is also an important cultural site, showing how the colonial settlers spent their free time. In October of 1887, the French announced the formation of the Union Indochinoise (Union of Indochina), which at that time comprised Cambodia, already an autonomous French possession, and the three regions of Vietnam (Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina. ... City motto: No motto City proper Province Phnom Penh Mayor Kep Chuktema ( ) Area 376 km² Population 2,009,264(2006) Density 5343. ... Aerial view of Angkor Wat The main entrance to the temple proper, seen from the eastern end of the Naga causeway Angkor Wat (or Angkor Vat) is a temple at Angkor, Cambodia, built for King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. ...

• Timeline of Hill Station [1]

Modern Day

Now abandoned, most of the buildings are still standing and the hotel in particular can still be explored. The strategic importance of the location is underlined by the fact that the Cambodian authorities maintain a Ranger Station on the site, and this doubles as a youth hostel with basic dorms and cooking facilities for those intrepid souls who make their way up here. The only other "inhabited" building on the site is a small temple. There is also a waterfall which tends to be dry in high season and in full flow during rainy season - hence few tourists ever see it in full flow, as travelling up the hill to Bokor is highly inadvisable in rainy season.

Today the site is beginning to attract significant numbers of tourists. Reaching the top of Bokor Hill requires a 32km grind from sea-level to the top of the 3000ft peak up a broken road that is barely passable under optimum conditions and takes 3 hours to complete in either direction. Most travellers hire a local driver-guide and travel on the back of a motorbike or in a 4x4. It is possible for the more intrepid travellers to hire their own vehicle in Kampot and tackle the road themselves.