Poachers and Gamekeepers

“You want beer party now?”

As we wandered the haunted hotel by torchlight, Saa’s invitation kind of broke the mood.

The Bokor Hill Station, a French colonial ghost town in Bokor National Park, Cambodia, is film-set spooky. Western explorers discovered the area in 1917, then a road and a beautiful art deco hill station followed during the 20s.

At the Bokor Grand Hotel and Casino, gamblers lost fortunes then threw themselves from the verandah into the ravine below.

As it happens, having hiked ten miles uphill with the prospect of more of the same tomorrow, I didn’t fancy a beer party. Z son did. But only if he was allowed to drink beer.

Tree, Not Try

Tree knows the Bokor National Park better than most. After all, he lived in the forest for two years.

“My life was not a good one,” he says. “I was born in 1958. Until I was twelve, life was good. Then Nixon bomb my country and the trouble start.”

His family were prosperous peasants. They owned their own land, and Tree went to school at the temple.

“With the bombs, we had to hide in the forest. Then the Khmer Rouge kill my family, and I live in the forest alone,” he says.