Bokor National Park

Bokor National Park is an unmissable trip out from Kampot. Explore the romantic, highly atmospheric old casino — a legacy from Cambodia’s colonial days — as well as impressive waterfalls (during rainy season), plus a stunning, winding journey that takes you more than a kilometre above sea level. This is a full, thrilling day and we thoroughly recommend doing this under your own steam rather than with a group, so that you can take the time to explore at your leisure.

Established by the French as a hill station in 1925, Bokor has been abandoned twice, during World War II and the Khmer Rouge period. The area including Bokor ‘mountain’ was established as a national park in 1993, with its 1,500 square kilometres spanning four Cambodian provinces. Despite substantial illegal logging, it’s still home to leopard cats, gibbons, hornbills, civets and sunbears.

Recent development of a gaudy new casino, hotel and hangar-like convention centre may have affected the ghostly ambiance of the hill station, but they did add a wonderful curving road to the top of the hill, making Bokor much easier to access.

There were once plans for an international helicopter port with immigration control to be installed here so that guests could fly in from neighbouring countries and not have to let passing through Phnom Penh get between them and their gaming tables. We guess that’s still possible.

 

 

 

Ref: https://www.travelfish.org/sight_profile/cambodia/southern_cambodia/kampot/kampot/3611

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