It was destroyed by the Vietnamese military in late 1984, after which its population was transferred to Site Two Refugee Camp.A Khmer Serei camp was established near the Thai village of Ban Nong Chan sometime in the 1950s by Cambodians opposed to the rule of Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

The Thai military commander Colonel Prachak Sawaengchit ordered his troops to shell Nong Chan[4] (known at that time as Camp 511[5]), killing about 100 refugees.

[3] In November 1979 Kong Sileah met with Robert Patrick Ashe, a five-year veteran of humanitarian work in Thailand and suggested that food should be distributed at Nong Chan for Cambodians to take home to the interior.

[6] This initiated the famous "land bridge", a fairly successful attempt to distribute food, farm tools and seeds to Khmers living inside Kampuchea.

[3] Starting on 12 December, Ashe and Kong Sileah organized orderly distributions using camp administrators to give between 10 and 30 kilograms of rice to people arriving from inside Cambodia.

Kong Sileah left the camp and moved with his soldiers into the interior of occupied Kampuchea, living in rustic conditions in the forest, a factor which may have contributed to his death from cerebral malaria on 16 August, 1980.

World Relief, Christian Outreach and Oxfam responded in May by distributing hoe heads, plow tips, rope, fishnets, and fishhooks, as well as oxcarts.

On 26 June Robert Ashe, Dr. Pierre Perrin (ICRC Medical Coordinator) and two journalists (George Lienemann and Richard Franken)[15][16] were captured by the Vietnamese and marched about 25 kilometers inside Kampuchea through torrential rain and with no shelter at night.

Arriving in the Cambodian town of Nimitt he was interrogated by a Vietnamese officer as to whether food aid was going to anticommunist guerrillas,[18] and after four days they were freed and allowed to walk over the bridge at the border back into Thailand.

[19][20] Towards the end of 1980 Chea Chhut was persuaded by General Dien Del to join forces with the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) and at the end of 1982 Nong Chan became the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces's (KPNLAF) military headquarters, although Ampil Camp remained the administrative headquarters until it was destroyed in early 1985.

Nong Chan housed the KPNLAF's 3rd, 7th and 9th battalions and a "Special Forces" unit commanded by Khmer Captain Pahn Tai that was being trained by the British SAS with arms and assistance from the Malaysian Army for sabotage operations inside Cambodia.