Crew of collapsed 'endless cruise' claim they are being 'held hostage' in Cambodia with passports withheld and wages unpaid
Passengers aboard the Villa Vie Odyssey, whose founder Mikael Patterson has admitted he is the 'villain' of the story and says he is considering bankruptcy.
Dozens of crew members aboard the stranded Villa Vie Odyssey say they cannot leave the ship because Cambodia will not grant them visas to reach the airport, with passports withheld and temperatures in their cabins hitting 43C. Some workers claim they have gone two months without pay while enduring what one anonymous post called "prison food" and filthy brown tap water. The 509-cabin vessel remains docked at Sihanoukville after operator Villa Vie Residences ran out of fuel money entirely.
The ~200 passengers — some of whom paid up to $450,000 for a 15-year cabin — were given less than 24 hours to disembark on Tuesday.
Internal documents show the crisis had been building since August, when the ship was briefly detained in Hong Kong and residents were asked for a collective $2.2m loan to keep it moving.
Founder Mikael Petterson, who blamed spiralling fuel costs from the Iran war, said: 'I'm the villain in the story.'
