Abandoned places, overgrown paths, houses held up by invading sand dunes, peeling walls, restless ghosts. Kolmanskop; Namibia and Bokor Hill Station; Cambodia are classically known as ghost towns. However I heard many ghost stories in Cambodia and at Bokor Hill Station, but I heard none at Kolmanskop.

Bokor Hill Station, a place to escape the Cambodian heat by former Royals and French elite, was built in 1922. It contained its own hotel, casino, police station, Catholic Church and former Royal residencies among others. It has been fiercely fought over since it was abandoned by the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese and used by the Khmer Rouge as a base during their regime. The basement of the Bokor Palace was a prison where they often exercised acts of torture before murdering the prisoners by pushing them off the outside wall where they would fall to their deaths. The locals know this place as ‘The dark place.’ In Cambodia it is believed that a person who does not receive a proper funeral cannot make the journey to another place.

Kolmanskop was built in 1908 in the Namibian desert. It was once a substantial mining town, home to the rich; around 300 German adults and 40 children, and the not so rich; 800 Owambo contract workers. The town consisted of many buildings including a theatre, casino, skittle hall, butchery and bakery, a soda water and lemonade plant, swimming pool, and hospital with the first x-ray machine in the Southern Hemisphere. Shortly after the 1st World War diamond sales dropped and richer deposits were discovered further south. Within 40 years the town had flourished and died. Abandoned by whom? I didn’t feel alone, maybe it was the presence of animals that now dwell in these places I felt, or maybe Bokor Hill Station and Kolmanskop are two places where restless ghosts can wander.