Pie in the sky

The proposed new Sokha city on top of Bokor mountain - I feel nauseous!

The Las Vegas-style Sokha Bokor Hotel & Casino - coming your way soon

Sorry to bring you two very depressing pictures, and I appreciate they are just artists' impressions of what the top of Bokor mountain will look like in the future, but anyone who has been there will know how sad this looks. I spotted the pictures on a Sokimex calendar in a Kep beach restaurant and had to show you what the Sokha Group are planning. That's if they don't run out of money first. They are still working on the road to the top - access is currently denied to tourists, unless you can bribe the workers to take you to the top or you fancy a 2-day hike negotiating landslides brought on by the early rains - and with other massive hotel projects also taking place at the same time in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville, its not unfeasible that Sokha may have to tighten their belt at some stage and the Bokor project could be the one to suffer. How about they just complete the road and leave it at that! Who needs a golf course, shopping mall, humungous casinos and suchlike on the top of a mountain anyway? And to lighten the day, here's a couple of children photos taken at the wedding in Kompong Trach that I went to on Tuesday.

No such thing as stage fright for these Kompong Trach youngsters

The adorable Belle enjoying an 'ice moment' courtesy of daddy Nick

Bokor under seige

The atmospheric charm of the Bokor Palace Hotel - soon to be lost forever?

The magic of Bokor Mountain may soon be lost forever, though even the might of the Sokimex Group will not be able to stop the clouds and fog from rolling in and obscuring everything on a regular basis. This week, the ground-breaking ceremony took place on the $1 billion new development that Sokimex are putting in place to transform the summit of the mountain, located along Cambodia's southwest coastline. Access to the mountaintop has been closed until April at the earliest as Sokimex make a start on their project that will include a 12-16 storey five-star hotel, three 3-star hotels, a shopping center, residential area of apartments and villas to house 6,000 people, an amusement park, a casino and cable car system, not forgetting an Arnold Palmer golf course. What planet are these people on? The same planet that has about half a dozen satellite cities surrounding Phnom Penh in limbo due to the world's financial crisis. By the way they still haven't finished constructing the new road to the top a year after they started. And there's still no word on whether the atmospheric Bokor Palace Hotel will be renovated or torn down, most likely the latter. So with the landscape at Bokor undergoing change, Kampot will have to devise other ways to attract tourists - though with a new port, a special economic zone and a hydropower dam at Tek Chhou, these are likely to send visitors scurrying in other directions. I don't sound very optimistic do I?