A ghost town in the hills of Cambodia

[geovalin]

Kirirom National Park Shutterstock

The cave is full of bats. The smell of guano and bad tempered chittering emanate. Mick, my guide, throws a stone, hoping to rouse the bats and justify the punishing uphill trek and subsequent clamber halfway down a cliff to where we now stand, precariously, on an outcrop of rock. Behind us, the flat, hot plains of Cambodia stretch into the distance.

The bats are unmoved. Mick shrugs and starts to climb back up, his flip flops bending on the rock edges. I stick a toe in the cliff, grab a fist-sized lump and haul myself up after him. The lump crumbles into dust. It wasn’t a rock, just dried mud. For what seems like several seconds I’m suspended in mid-air like a cartoon.

The likeliest outcome flashes through my mind: another disappeared foreigner, last seen driving a red Keeway motorcycle into Kirirom National Park, southeast Cambodia. He wanted to see the pine forest, they would say. And the ghost town. Such a tragedy.

I land, flat on my back, several feet below on a large rock lodged between two split seams of cliff. Air wrenched from my lungs. I check myself. Fine. I check my camera. Also fine. The bats chatter feverishly. Mick peers down and grins, “God must look after you,” he says.

I had arrived at the outskirts of Kirirom National Park the previous evening having driven four hours from the coastal town of Kep. Its home to Cambodia’s only high-altitude pine forest and peaks at 1,000 metres above sea-level. The late King Norodom Sihanouk first came here in 1944, riding an elephant. He renamed it Kirirom (Happy Mountain) and established a resort.

Today, all that remains of Sihanouk’s palace is the monolithic fireplace. It stretches high into the trees. Scattered jasmine flowers and incense burn at the base: prayers for the old king’s soul. Mick says there are about 150 abandoned or ruined villas built by Cambodian elites in the 1950s. After the genocidal Khmer Rouge was toppled in 1979, surviving fighters established a stronghold here and smashed the villas as symbols of the hated king and his bourgeois followers.

read more http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/abandoned-ghost-town-cambodia-kirirom-national-park-happy-mountain-trekking-a7033446.html

[MockingJay]

Well written travel article - respect!

[schondie]

There was a really great article on an abandoned hotel/casino in Cambodia on this website but I cannot find it any more.

http://sometimes-interesting.com

If abandoned places is your thing and you enjoy well written articles then that website will keep you busy.

[exalll]

There was a really great article on an abandoned hotel/casino in Cambodia on this website but I cannot find it any more.

http://sometimes-interesting.com

If abandoned places is your thing and you enjoy well written articles then that website will keep you busy.

Probably the one at Bokor - a French colonial retreat on top of the mountain. The old church there is very evocative. The old abandoned casino has been replaced by a modern Sokha-financed monstrosity.