5. Bokor Hill Station Catholic Church
Standing alone, over three thousand feet above sea level in Preah Monivong National Park in southern Cambodia, is this abandoned Catholic church. Constructed primarily out of stone in the 1920s as part of a collection of buildings that would ultimately form a luxury resort and getaway for French colonials, the church is now an emblem of oppressive colonial rule, rather than of charitable Christian evangelism.
Tucked away, high up on a remote mountain location, Bokor Hill Station consists of the church, a casino, a royal residence, and a few other buildings, all of which have now been abandoned. Shockingly, during the nine months of construction that it took to erect these structures, over 900 Cambodian laborers died. It’s hard to imagine that the souls of almost a thousand Cambodians, worked to death by their French colonisers for the sake of their opulent vacation community, don’t haunt the area to this day.
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