Faded glory: The many lives of a Kampot palace
Originally built as a retreat for the French colonial
elite, the Bokor Palace Hotel eventually became the site of forced
labour and Khmer Rouge massacres
On the morning of January 6, 1962, the staircase leading up to Bokor
Palace Hotel was strewn with ribbons in anticipation of a grand opening
party. According to a yellowing invitation buried in Phnom Penh’s
National Archives, military rosettes were handed out in the morning and
champagne flutes were served before lunch. Newspaper columnist Peter
Hann noted that then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk was “every bit as
effervescent” as the booze. The evening finished with dancing in the
ballroom amid bouquets of flowers.
It must have been misty up on the mountain because, posting online
many years later, one man who said he had been a guest described how
“the cloud that surrounded the building [felt] like we were in heaven.”
But, more than five decades later, the haze that cloaked the skeletal
remains of the hotel on a recent morning gave the place the air of a
gloomy purgatory. Of the barren remains of the ballroom, chipped ruby
tiles glazed with rainwater were the only splashes of colour. Rust red
lichen had formed elsewhere.
It was a strange contrast to the other hotel a modern visitor to the
mountain will find: Thansur Bokor Highland Resort – the billion-dollar
casino development opened by Sokha Hotels in 2012. The new development
has left the old hotel mostly untouched – although tidied up here and
there. Layers of graffiti have been scrubbed away. On Thansur’s website,
the ruins of Bokor Palace are touted as an “ideal wedding venue”.
Open-air ceremonies are available for booking, according to general
manager Benoit Jancloes. Romantic candlelit dinners can be served.
Buried within the walls of the ruins, however, is a much darker tale that can be pieced together from archival relics and the testimony of characters who knew the place during the various chapters of its history.
It begins with hard labour. The Bokor Palace Hotel was originally
intended as part of a colonial French hill-station, a place to retreat
to cooler air during the hot season. Construction began in the early
1900s – and the work was back-breaking. The original mountain road was
built by prisoners, who were disciplined by being buried to their necks
in the baking sun, said French writer Marguerite Duras, who grew up in
Kampot, in an interview later in her life.
Many are believed to have died before the road was even ready to
carry passengers up to the hotel, which had 38 bedrooms. In a 1925
inventory of staff enlisted to work within its doors, four prisoners are
listed, with three “paid” prisoners added in pencil.
The doors opened on Valentine’s Day in 1925 and a dance was held that
evening to celebrate. The lavish six-course menu included gazpacho,
“US-style” crawfish, rich foie gras served cold and strawberries from
the Emerald Valley served with Chantilly cream. The last guest didn’t
leave until 5am. “Fur framed the women’s faces … [We were] asking
ourselves if the Grand Hotel wasn’t a winter palace in our Cote d’Azur,”
remembered the French resident of Kampot Duras in an article preserved
in the Phnom Penh archives.
**
Even after the hotel opened, bloody accidents continued. A letter from the supervising officer in June 1931, when the road was under construction again, describes an explosion that killed two men and injured two others. In the bloody aftermath, he notes, “We could still see the blood on the dead leaves, in the cracks in the soil, and in the puddles.”
During the First Indochina War, the Bokor Palace acted as a military hospital, but was abandoned thereafter.
The glamorous evening in 1962 was Bokor Palace Hotel’s second debut.
This time, a casino was added by Sihanouk, who was so taken by the
mountain that he went on to shoot a film there, Rose de Bokor.
The hotel was mostly reserved for members of government and wealthy
businesspeople, according to Marie-Françoise Chatel, who was a professor
from 1960 to 1965 at the Lycée Preah Reach Samphear in
KampotCOSTOCHONDRITIS.
“Kampot was a rich town, happy and friendly,” she recalled in an
email from France, where she is now retired. Bokor Palace, a cold and
misty place, was seen as a remnant of colonialism, she said, as
independence was relatively recent.
“Cambodians didn’t go to Bokor itself... Bokor was mysterious and
made people a little afraid. Western expats liked to go there to find
fresh air, picnicking and playing petanque. No one went off the beaten
trails.”
The major attraction was the casino, which drew mainly Vietnamese and
Chinese clients and was dubbed in one newspaper article “the dreariest
casino in the world”. “I went there once: stress and passion reigned,”
wrote Chatel.
**
Bokor might have been mysterious, cold and misty in the ’60s, but it was the Khmer Rouge who tattooed a truly dark shadow on the mountain. Uy Sokkaom can attest to that. The soft-spoken 55-year-old now works in Kampot town repairing motorbikes, and was formerly a tour guide. He used to live on the mountain – and saw some of the hotel’s most gruesome days.
After the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, Sokkaom’s father, mother
and sister were murdered. “They accused my father of being in the CIA. I
saw them kill my family, but I ran away from the killing place while
they shot at me,” he remembered.
He fled to the jungle that sprawls across Bokor – at the time, a wild
forest home to elephants and tigers – and spent years in hiding. That’s
how he acquired his nickname: “Mr Tree”.
“When I lived up in the trees, the only thing I had to fear was
cobras,” he recalled. “Then the Vietnamese found me. I had to convince
them I wasn’t in the Khmer Rouge, and [so] I fought [alongside] them in
the old church. I knew the mountain better than anyone, so I became a
kind of leader.”
While Sokkaom and the Vietnamese were holed up in the church, the
Khmer Rouge occupied Bokor Palace. Much of it remained untouched. There
were still paintings hanging in the old ballroom. “The chandeliers
didn’t work. The marble [which was later stolen] and the tables and
chairs, they were still there,” recalled Sokkaom.
He can still picture the slaughter that took place. “They killed
people in the casino – there was blood on the walls,” he said. “Some
people’s hands were cut off.” Others had their hands bound and were
thrown off the mountain, he added.
After the Khmer Rouge regime fell, Sokkaom worked with the United
Nations to clear landmines – some of which he had planted during the
conflict – from the area before later becoming a tour guide. Now he
refuses to go back to the old hotel.
The mountain was named a National Park in 1993, but now the plateau
belongs to Sokha Hotels. When asked about the development of the
mountain, Sokkaom said: “It is not good for nature and the jungle, but
it is good for jobs.”
Last year, a representative of Sokha Hotels said the old hotel would
be converted into a museum. But when contacted for this article,
management said there had been no decision on whether the hotel would be
restored as a museum, or as accommodation.
Historian Jean-Michel Filippi, who is working to set up his own museum in Kampot, believes the former to be unlikely.
“I don’t think the old hotel will ever become a museum, in the true
sense of the term. When I visited the new developments, I didn’t see any
creativity or interesting perspective,” he said.
**
Whatever happens to the ruins, the hotel is well preserved in memory. From a letter by R. Villatte, an agronomist writing in the 1920s:
“There is nothing mediocre on the coast of the gulf of Siam; nature
only exposes its masterpieces here. The marvelous Bokor Palace is a work
of genius from one of the best governors of Indochina…
“By the moonlight, during one of those starry nights which Cambodia
is so famous for, the poetic enchantment here seems to belong to things
truly out of this world.”
The KR killed millions and the KR are still in power. The KR of China were highly educated lost to the KR of Yuon were peasant now are in power. That's why I marked it's funny.
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