The Ugly

As I have said previously. There is some real ugliness lurking under the surface of Cambodian society....

To set the scene:
It's Christmas day, Traci and I had been sitting in the Funky Munkey bar since about 6pm, chatting to people and generally enjoying ourselves. We finally spilled out at about 1am, a little drunk, and started to walk back to the hotel we were staying in, about 800 metres away.
40 metres from the pub door, an american bloke stopped us and asked if there was anything happening, so we sent him down the street to the Funky Munkey, and turned the corner of the street.

About 10 seconds later two drunk young Cambodian lads on a moto (110cc honda scooter), came round the corner that the Funky Munkey is on, 50 metres behind us. Unfortunately for them, they came round the corner way, way to fast. They clipped the curb and flew into a concrete lamp post.
The poor american bloke we had sent up the street with the promise of friendly people and beer watched the whole thing, and ran into the bar to get help. Trixie ran out with some of her Cambodian staff, and a customer (steve, who used to be an army paramedic in the vietnam war).

Mac and Trixie (the bar owners) were planning on shutting the bar and heading out for a christmas drink, but ended up trying to save a couple of lives instead.

Both of the victims were in a pretty bad way, one with part of his scull missing, but they tried their best. Trixie sent for towels and they tried to stop the bleeding.

Four police men turned up, and just stood around watching Trixie and Steve. Trixie was screaming at them to help, to radio for an ambulance... anything. She asked her staff to translate, but to no avail. She ended up getting her mobile and handing it to one of her staff to call for an ambulance. While here back was turned one of the police men bent down and started pulling at one of the injured guys watches, trying to pull it off his arm. When she yelled at him for doing that, he just tried to pull the guys gold necklace off instead.

Needless to say, everyone involved was pretty pissed off, and the Christmas cheer vanished. The ambulance turned up, and roughly threw the two dying lads in the back, as you would a sack of potatos, then drove off.

The police then realised that they could just take the moto, and promptly dissapeared with it. Im sure it was in the second hand bike market the next day.

Needless to say, the two lads died. According to Steve, the ex vietnam war paramedic, its unlikely that they would have lived even if they had crashed in front of a hospital in England or America, but still, it makes you think of how cheaply life is viewed here sometimes... and really thats what it boils down to, their lives were cheap because they couldnt afford the hospital bills.