Strangest Day

I'm not the most comfortable when driving on switch backs, but today seemed a little beyond everyone's comfort zone. 

We decided that instead of a day on the beach we would take a drive up to Bokor National Park, 36 Kms in the mountains. The French built a palace and church up there in the 1920s and they were first abandoned around 1950.

After that, the palace was used as a casino until it was permanently abandoned in 1972 when the Khmer Rouge took over the area. The Khmer Rouge retreated to the area when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 and remained there until 1990.

All that remains up there is the abandoned casino and the empty church, except for the new builds lower down.

The weather down in Kampot was cloudy but no rain. Half way up we hit rain and near the top we hit fog...a very dense fog.

We couldn't see much, let alone the abandoned casino.  We followed a small trail on foot....very carefully....not having a clue where we were. A strong gust of wind came up and right in front of us stood the palace. Not more that 30 or 40 meters away and we couldn't see it. Eerie!

We explored the abandoned building for 20 minutes before deciding to head back down. We missed seeing the newly built casino father down and the abandoned Catholic Church, but it appeared to be too dangerous to drive on roads we couldn't see.

The fog and wind left us soaked....so much for hairstyles today.

I'm sure our driver had never seen anything like this because as soon as we stopped he was out taking pictures.  "Oh my God" was the favourite expression of our guide on the drive up.

Even on a foggy and windy day, the women were trying to make a living by selling fruit near the abandoned building.