It is our last full day in Cambodia and we have decided that we had such a great day the day before on the motorbikes that we are going to rent them again.
Outside of the city of Kampot there is a large plateau up in the hills known as the Bokor Highlands. In the early 1900s a hill station, a church, a casino, and a variety of other buildings were built up on the highlands. The highlands are about 1000 meters above sea level, and even though it is in the tropics the temperature is about 10C cooler than the coast during the hot season so Bokor Hill Station became a place for well to do foreigners and Cambodians to come to escape the heat of the lowlands or the bustle of Phnom Penh.
The highlands was a busy place for decades until the Khmer Rouge era when it was abandoned as a vacation spot around 1972 and used by the Khmer Rouge as a stronghold during their conflict with the Vietnamese. Today the highlands is home to a huge new casino megaproject that will add golf courses and housing developments in future phases. Some of the original buildings still remain though and after years of abandonment leave haunting reminders of a forgotten time. This of course all adds up to an adventure for us to go up to the highlands for a nice long ride, and look around at the old ruins.
The trip to Bokor from Kampot is about 50km and in addition to a good vertical rise to the top, the road is quite twisty with a lot of curves and switchbacks, so this makes for a fun ride. As we enter the park we are surprised to find that the road was fully replaced/upgraded by the casino project and we are now riding on what is probably the best road in Cambodia and with almost no other traffic! As we climb up the mountainside we are rewarded with some incredible views down to the coast and also over Kampot and the surrounding rice fields.
It is low season here, and we know that the skies are not going to be clear and sunny all day, but we have been watching the mountain for a few days from the city and know we are highly likely to encounter some clouds and maybe even some light rains along the way. As we get about halfway up the mountain we start to ride through small patches of low-lying cloud and it is quite interesting to be ‘up there’ in the cloud cover. What we are not prepared for is the amount that the cloud cover increases in density as we get closer to the top. By the time we reach the highlands the visibility has dropped to about 20 feet and we are riding through the pea-soup fog!
We are starting to wonder if maybe we should just turn back as the temperature has dropped a bit and we wonder if we will actually be able to see anything but I had read that some of the old buildings look even more eerie when the fog is around so we decide we have come this far we might as well go on for a bit farther.
We come to a roundabout and one of the roads leads off to a waterfall so we decide to go there first, and oddly as we round a few corners the fog clears off completely and we are riding across the highland with relatively clear skies. It is still a bit cooler up here than down at sea level, and when we see what is clearly going to be a huge housing development along the road I wonder who would actually choose to live up here given the crappy and swiftly changing weather they have for at least half the year.
Towards the end of the road we reach the waterfall and are surprised to see what looks like a fairly large conference center type building and an outdoor sitting/eating area, but not another soul around anywhere. We go down to have a look at the waterfall and initially are a little disappointed – the waterfall does not look like much more than a bit of rapids and we are getting ready to wander off when we spot a rough trail off to one end of the viewpoint. We get about 20 feet into the jungle and this is where the real falls are! Just past the public viewpoint the riverbed drops off a cliff and down into a valley below. The drop is probably 100 to 150 feet and the river cascades through a couple of pools to the bottom. The edge is pretty sheer and Mrs. Columbus sounds the warning tone as I try to get out closer for a good picture – unfortunately the pictures will never show it as well as the real thing.
Now it is time to go back towards the main part of the highlands to the original hill station and casino. As soon as we get back near the main roundabout the fog closes back in and the visibility drops off dramatically again. After a bit more climbing we are down to about 10 feet of visibility and moving pretty slow to make sure we don’t suddenly meet something bigger than us on the road.
I know there is a Wat up here somewhere and after a few more kilometers in the fog we can see the gate to the temple. It seems that this side of the highland pretty much drops almost straight down to the lowlands and the temple is built on the high point of the highlands and right on the edge of the cliff. When we are standing at the wall along the edge of the grounds with the thick blanket of mist that is everywhere it feels like we are right on the edge of the earth with the great nothing just steps away. It is very hard to describe how it looked and how I felt standing there, but in some ways I am happy that the fog is there and the illusion it creates instead of what is probably an equally awesome view on a clear day!
With the light wind and the misty fog, and rain that could start at any time Mrs Columbus decides that it is time for her to break out her rain poncho. She hopes that it will also help to keep her at least slightly warmer for the rest of the ride. I am not sure about any of that, but at least the sound of the thin plastic flapping in the wind allows me to know where she is when I am riding in front 🙂
I am still hoping to see the old casino and some of the other old abandoned buildings so we get back on the road to look for those. It soon becomes clear that we are not going to get any break at all from the fog, and the visibility is so poor that we almost cannot see the road signs anymore. The road we are on suddenly ends and on our right side is an old building – probably a large house at one time – and on our left side is a large new house. We can only see them because they are built right next to the road, if they had been built another 20 feet or so back we would have never known they were there. It is quite a stark contrast between the new and the old, and I wonder a bit why the new house was built there as the view out the front door looks a bit like a Detroit slum.
We take a few minutes to wander in and around the old building and it is quite creepy exploring it in the fog – kind of like being in a Stephen King movie, but I can tell by her chattering teeth that Mrs. Columbus is still cold, and starting to not have fun anymore, so we turn around and head back. I tell her that if we see the casino on the road we will stop otherwise we can start down the mountain. As we are working our way back down the road – again fairly slowly because I almost can’t see more than about a bike length in front of me – I see a guy sitting by the side of the road?! I could have easily not seen him at all in the thick fog, but I stop to see if maybe he can tell me where the casino is. It turns out that he is a security guard who’s job it is to watch the casino site. The casino is apparently a short walk off the road but we can’t even see the faintest indication of it through the fog and the guard basically tells us that the fog is so thick that there is not much to see today. I would kind of like to explore a bit, but my companion is getting a bit antsy, and I figure that if the fog keeps getting thicker that the ride down is going to be even trickier, so I guess we will leave this exploration for another trip and it is back to the bikes and down the mountain we go.
(these are not my photos, but are what we would have seen if the visibility was not sooo bad)
The ride is a bit iffy for about 20 minutes and then almost like there is a gate or something we ride out of the fog and back into clearing skies – very weird indeed. The rest of the ride back down the mountain is quite fun, and by the time we are about half way down we are all dry again and warm enough for Mrs. Columbus to take her rain condom off. It was interesting to watch her ride with it on though because from behind with the plastic flapping in the breeze she looked a bit like a superhero 😉
It has been a good day overall – the ride on the good mountain road was quite fun, and as we return to Kampot it is time to start thinking about dinner and getting ourselves packed up for our departure tomorrow.
For dinner we have decided once again to return to the Rusty Keyhole 2 – a nice little pub that serves homemade food all prepared by a fellow from Manchester and his Cambodian wife. The food is really good and this is our third time here, but it seemed like a fitting spot for our last night in Kampot.
