Phnom Penh tragedy

I don’t really know how to approach writing about what happened in Phnom Penh at the weekend. The thought of suffocating people simply being squeezed off the edge of the bridge and sliding into the water, the police teams searching the river for bodies, the images of the makeshift morgue in the city’s hospitals where unidentified bodies are left uncovered for relatives to search for the missing, and the thought of army trucks leaving Phnom Penh for the provinces carrying piles of coffins are all very disturbing. Outside one of the hospitals there is a noticeboard with hundreds of photos of dead bodies for people to search for missing relatives, and I think this inevitably recalls the photos of the Khmer Rouge victims at Tuol Sleng – death on such a scale becomes not an individual experience but something impersonal and systemitised.

I think I will give a personal account of my experiences in Phnom Penh this weekend, often very close to the centre of the tragedy yet knowing nothing until several hours later. I am aware that this will sound self-centred but, reflecting on the weekend, I feel that I was self-centred, enjoying three days of partying and, at the time of the crush, completely ignorant of what was going on.

All weekend the atmosphere in Phnom Penh was excellent. Three days of boat racing began on Saturday and, although I missed watching the VSO team as I didn’t arrive till late afternoon, it was great to see the other volunteers and watch some of the races from the riverside. While they went for a post-race celebration, I went to meet Chak who, having been given leftover alcohol from a friend’s wedding, had a weekend of parties and heavy drinking planned. This began at his mum’s house where we drank red wine with ice and ate some Cambodian bar snacks, which I’m becoming used to although still not liking very much – duck foetuses (duck eggs that are cooked when the duck has already begun to form), deep fried crickets, unidentifiable bags of meat. I enjoyed chatting to his mum and his Phnom Penh friends and neighbours, one of whom invited me to his engagement party the following day. When Chak passed out at around 8.30, I went back to meet the other volunteers for a few more beers. I was exhausted and drunk when I got back to the VSO programme office where I shared a room with Dave and Ingran.

At 6.20, Chak phoned to tell me to get ready for the engagement party. Perhaps foolishly, I’m assumed that it would be in the evening or the afternoon at the earliest, but I was told to prepare for a 7.30am start. I did as I was told and, after stopping for breakfast, we were on our way out of Phnom Penh along flat straight roads surrounded by rice fields, until we reached the village where the fiancée’s family lived. I was mortified to discover that the party was actually a dinner in which the husband-to-be brought his friends and family to meet his fiancée’s family. It was an embarrassing few hours and I felt terrible to have intruded, but they were very welcoming and genuinely didn’t seem to mind, while having lunch with a bottle of rum and whisky helped smooth things over. Completely drunk by 12.30, we went back to Phnom Penh and slept for a few hours.

I met Danny, another volunteer, for a drink (water) at around 4pm and then, after showering at Chak’s mum’s, we went daa-leing (literally ‘walk-playing’) around town. It was very busy and there were times when we couldn’t move for several minutes. Some people seemed to be enjoying pushing their friends through the crowds although there were lots of children so I didn’t think it was at all funny. Anyway, we had food in a cheap burger place, went to two nightclubs and had lots of fun, and sitting along one of the main streets eating Cambodian meatballs at 1.30, I took some photos of a sleepy, happy, drunken end to the evening.

It wasn’t the end though. We met Chomnit (the friend who had just got engaged) and drifted through the still-busy Phnom Penh streets towards Wat Phnom where we had coffee in a cafe that had two TVs, lots of coffee, board games and about twenty-five customers, almost all of whom were fast asleep. I found it hilarious that so many people would sit sleeping in a cafe at 2am rather than going home, but soon I was joining them and had to be woken up to go back home.

We woke up early again the next morning, bought a mountain bike to take to Mondulkiri, and then enjoyed riding it towards Chak’s cousins’ house where, inexplicably, there was to be another drinking session starting at 9am. His cousins are students in their early twenties and it was really good fun, this time the drink being accompanied by dried squid and small shells that were a bit like mussels. Feeling like I was living a chapter in a Kerouac novel, we went back to sleep in the afternoon before heading out at around 5pm.

This was Monday, the day of the tragedy, and the streets were very busy. We had a beer in a concert sponsored by Anchor Beer, and the concert being pretty dire, Chak suggested going to Diamond Island, the place where the accident later took place. I had heard of Diamond Island and had mistakenly thought its name came from the rich Cambodian elite who partied there, and this was enough to put me off ever going. Had I realised it was named after its shape and that there was a big free concert going on that night, I’m sure I would have said yes. As it was, we met his cousins again and went somewhere else, where we had a nice time although I was pretty exhausted from the whole weekend and in fact we were all a bit subdued. On the way back after the cousins had left, Chak and I stopped for food. It was around 1am and there was a television showing pictures of a police officer holding a collapsed girl. Not understanding the language and not really watching anyway, I assumed it was an isolated case. When we got back Chak mentioned something about lots of people being electrocuted from the lights on the Diamond Island bridge, but I didn’t really take it in. Perhaps because I was drunk and tired, and perhaps because mass electrocution didn’t seem realistic, I thought it was a rumour that had got out of hand, and fell asleep.

Waking up at 6am, I saw that Jim had phoned and texted to ask if I was okay, and that was when I realised that something serious had happened. Chak had heard more from his friend and told me that there’d been a stampede on the bridge, but still I remember nearly asking, ‘But nobody’s died, have they?’ I didn’t ask, I think because I didn’t want to know the answer.

Four hundred dead was the figure quoted. I cycled to the VSO office to check the internet as I still wasn’t at all clear what had happened, despite being within a kilometre or so of the events. The news was obviously very shocking and so were the pictures. It didn’t occur to me to cycle towards the river although later I wished I had. Instead, after some tea and a shower, I headed to the bus station to catch the bus back to Mondulkiri.

Phnom Penh’s central market was already bustling, the station was crowded with buses pulling in and out of gaps on the side of the road, and the only sign of the catastrophe were the bloody pictures on the front pages of the newspapers that were being sold by street sellers along with bread, chewing gum, sweets. On the bus we passed the Calmette hospital where most of the bodies had been taken; already food stalls had been set up at the entrance. We listened to the news for a while and people talked about where they had been and what they had seen, but within an hour the usual karaoke videos were blaring out and people were settling down for the eight-hour journey. I felt a bit sickened by how uncaringly life was continuing and how I, by taking a bus, was part of the indifferent carry-on-as-normal routine. It wasn’t how I imagined being close to a major international disaster to be.

When I got home it was no longer a major international disaster anyway: the story had already slipped off the main pages of most of the news websites, Will and Kate’s wedding plans taking precedence over the four hundred dead and missing.

Inquests and investigations will follow, and as many have said, Cambodia’s disregard for even the most basic health and safety precautions will probably be blamed, but still what I am struck by is this seeming indifference to a massive tragedy. I am especially affected by this feeling because I was part of it: at the time of the tragedy I was enjoying myself in a bar, and within hours of finding out about the situation I was on a bus out of the city.