Last night outside the Naga casino in Phnom Penh, a Chinese man broke down on the side of the road, screaming desperately for help. His cries were so loud they echoed halfway down the street.
Tuk-tuk drivers parked nearby waiting for fares and people out for an evening walk stopped in their tracks. A few pulled out their phones to record, while others just shook their heads and walked around him. Local news reports and eyewitnesses said the man was in absolute distress, yelling for someone to save him and looking like he had nowhere left to turn.
Anyone who has spent time in Phnom Penh knows the area around Naga gets pretty messy after dark. The crowd drifting in and out smells of heavy tobacco and booze—some fresh off losing everything inside, others still looking for an angle. Nobody on the street wanted to get involved or ask what kind of mess he had gotten into, whether he’d been scammed out of his money or crossed the wrong people.
Police and local authorities eventually arrived to take him away, and the exact reason behind the incident is still under investigation.
Nearby, late-night food stalls kept pumping out steam as the humid night air mixed with the hot blast of motorbike exhaust. It was a bleak contrast to the desperate screaming just moments before. That’s Phnom Penh in a nutshell—boisterous and full of life on the surface, but if you take one wrong step out here far from home, you can scream until your voice gives out and nobody is going to reach down to pull you back up. If you’re living abroad, you really have to watch your own back.
