Ghosts, faded colonial grandeur in Cambodia's Elephant Mountains
BOKOR, Cambodia -- In the ruined ballroom of the Bokor Palace Hotel it is easy to imagine, amid the shattered floor tiles and mouldy walls, the clink of champagne flutes and lively chatter of a night out in this tiny colonial hill station.
A symbol of both the excesses of Cambodia's golden age and the apocalypse that followed, the long abandoned -- some say ghostly -- hotel and casino is now only haunted by curious tourists wandering among its dank rooms and tiny hallways.
A group of foreigners, perhaps looking for something tangible to link this old shell to the horrors they imagine have been committed here, talked excitedly during a recent visit about "bullet holes in the walls"...
Indeed, a bricked up window at the rear entrance to the hotel does appear riddled with bullet holes. But whether this is grim evidence of an execution, or merely the result of repeated looting will never be known.
The truth is forever lost under a shroud of mystery that is part of Bokor's appeal to those willing to make the three-hour climb to the top of this 1,000-metre (3,000-foot) rocky outcrop overlooking the sea in Cambodia's Elephant Mountains.
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A symbol of both the excesses of Cambodia's golden age and the apocalypse that followed, the long abandoned -- some say ghostly -- hotel and casino is now only haunted by curious tourists wandering among its dank rooms and tiny hallways.
A group of foreigners, perhaps looking for something tangible to link this old shell to the horrors they imagine have been committed here, talked excitedly during a recent visit about "bullet holes in the walls"...
Indeed, a bricked up window at the rear entrance to the hotel does appear riddled with bullet holes. But whether this is grim evidence of an execution, or merely the result of repeated looting will never be known.
The truth is forever lost under a shroud of mystery that is part of Bokor's appeal to those willing to make the three-hour climb to the top of this 1,000-metre (3,000-foot) rocky outcrop overlooking the sea in Cambodia's Elephant Mountains.