Bokor

Bokor is a sandstone mountain on the coast of Kampot province, in southern Cambodia. The French colonial government built a hill station on it in the 1920s. The mountain lies inside Preah Monivong Bokor National Park.

The Bokor Palace Hotel, in ruins, on Bokor Hill Station in 2007. Photo: Matnkat, CC BY 2.5

Heritage site details
Site type	Hill station and national park
Location	Kampot province
Country	Cambodia
Period	1917 to 1925 (hill station); 1993 (national park)
Subjects	Land, Place & Environment

The mountain and the park

The massif rises north from the sea to more than 1,100 meters (3,600 feet), the only high mountain on the Cambodian coast. IntoCambodia places it in the Elephant Mountains and gives a height of about 1,081 meters (3,547 feet). A study from about 2003 gave the park 140,000 hectares (346,000 acres), and named among its endangered animals the tiger, the leopard, the Asian elephant, the gaur, the sun bear, hornbills and the pileated gibbon. More than 9,000 tourists visited in 2001. IntoCambodia gives the park 156,116 hectares (385,800 acres), shared between Kampot, Kampong Speu and Preah Sihanouk provinces. Cambodianess writes that the park was created in 1993 under the name Preah Monivong National Park, though most people call it Bokor National Park. In 2004 it joined the ASEAN Heritage Parks of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the variety of its plants and animals.

The hill station

From the start of the 20th century the French built cool hill stations across Indochina, at first so that soldiers could rest without going home to France. In Cambodia they chose two sites in Kampot province: Kep by the sea and Bokor in the hills. The colonial officials who explored the plateau called it Popokvil, and gave names to its sights, among them the Cascades and the Grotto-Pagoda. One of them, Roland Meyer, dated the first step toward the station to April 27, 1917.

Work on the access road began in 1917 under the engineer Henri Fabre. It climbs 30 kilometers (19 miles) in hairpin bends to 1,050 meters (3,445 feet), above the cliffs that look over the Gulf of Thailand. Convicts did the work, with 800 prisoners taken from jails across Cambodia and replaced as the work went on, and the road was finished in two years. The historian Luc Mogenet writes, citing Meyer, that one or two thousand of the convicts died on the work. It opened in May 1919, the month Governor General Albert Sarraut visited Popokvil.

A royal ordinance of King Sisowath, dated April 13, 1922, authorized the station. By February 1924 it had the senior French official's villa, a post office, a power plant, an infirmary, a mission rest house and a small hotel. The Palace Hotel, a pagoda and a vegetable garden were finished at the end of 1924. The hotel opened on February 14, 1925, with 120 guests and a ball that lasted into the next morning. At the opening the head of its operating company thanked Baudoin, the senior French official, and Prince Monivong. It had 38 rooms, and a company was bound to run it to the standard of hotels on the French Riviera. Guests from across Indochina could arrive by the Bangkok to Saigon steamer, which called at Ream.

War, revival and ruin

During the First Indochina War the station served as a hospital. After an armed band burned it, it lay empty for some years. The government of independent Cambodia restored it in the early 1960s, and Prince Norodom Sihanouk formally opened the restored station on January 7, 1962. He had a private house nearby, the Sala Khmau or "black house", a rustic chalet close to the cliff about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the town.

Bokor was closed again after the coup of 1970 and became a Khmer Rouge stronghold. In 1979 Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese troops fought there, and a Khmer Rouge unit held out in the church for three months. The Cambodia Daily wrote in 2009 that the resort fell out of use during heavy fighting in the 1970s. In 1992 a French battalion of the United Nations force reopened the road. Khmer Rouge fighters returned in 1993, and the mountain opened to tourists again after they surrendered to the royal army.

Mogenet wrote in 2008 that the red-lichened ruins were among the favorite sights of visitors to the region. The actor Matt Dillon filmed many scenes of his first film as director, City of Ghosts, in the Palace Hotel.

Redevelopment

In 2008 the Sokimex company began a $1 billion plan to turn the old hill station into a large resort. The 30-kilometer road, long known as a hard ride for dirt bikes, had been leveled and widened almost to the top. Engineers found the metal frame of the old hotel crumbling, and the company's owner said he had asked the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, for advice on how to keep the building. Besides about 100 hectares (250 acres) around the hotel, the developers hoped to build on a further 300 hectares (740 acres) at Pov Pokvill, to the northwest.

Ground was broken in March 2009 for the project, which included a golf course at the foot of the mountain and the restoration of the French buildings. A Conservation International biologist wrote to The Cambodia Daily: "It's not ideal to have a casino in a national park." He added that the protected area could benefit from the investment if pollution was managed and tourists did not collect wildlife. IntoCambodia describes the old Palace Hotel as renovated in the same classic style.

Visiting

Bokor is about 190 kilometers (118 miles) from Phnom Penh and 11 kilometers (7 miles) from the town of Kampot, and visitors come by National Road 3 or National Road 4. A paved road of about 33 kilometers (21 miles), built by the Sokha Hotel company, runs from the foot of the mountain to the top. In 2024 the company was building a second road down to National Road 4.

At about 1,075 meters (3,527 feet), the summit is known for weather that can turn from cold to rain to fog within a single day. Sights that visitors seek out include the Popok Vil waterfall, the reservoir, Veal Sre 100 and Veal Sre 500, Heaven Gate and Temple Rock. For prayer or quiet there are Sampov Bram Pagoda, the statue of Yay Mao, the Catholic church, a Chinese temple and places for meditation around Sre 500. Overnight visitors can stay at the Thansour Bokor Hotel or camp. A statue of the Buddha 108 meters (354 feet) tall was under construction in 2024 and about 30 percent complete.

A strawberry farm on the mountain began as an experiment in 2023. By March 2025 it covered half a hectare, charged visitors US$1 to enter and picked 15 to 20 kilograms (33 to 44 pounds) of fruit a day. Its manager told the national news agency, Agence Kampuchea Presse, that it drew 20 to 30 visitors on weekdays and 400 to 500 at weekends.

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