It was mutiny on the Tonle Sap lake last week when foreign tourists traveling from Siem Reap town to Phnom Penh aboard a sinking passenger boat felt compelled to seize control of the vessel.
Panic ensued among the mostly foreign tourists on board the boat, carrying some 125 people, on the morning of Nov 27 after water began filling the cabin, said Daul Sam Ol, Kompong Chhnang province deputy police chief in charge of traffic. “Passengers were scared and wanted the boat to dock, but the crew didn’t [want to dock],” he said Tuesday.
Daul Sam Ol said he did not know whether passengers had commandeered the boat.
A Canadian travel journalist, who was on the boat and who spoke on condition of anonymity Tuesday, said that passengers, after seeing that the boat’s hull was filled with water and failing to convince the boat’s captain to return to Siem Reap, took matters into their own hands.
According to the Canadian, after taking over the boat, a Russian mechanic, who was among the passengers, temporarily sealed the hole on the portside of the boat with wood from the boat’s staircase, passengers’ T-shirts, and a rubber sandal.
A number of male passengers then formed a bucket brigade to bail out the boat’s hull, the Canadian said. “The whole time the crew did nothing—we did it all,” he claimed.
The six-hour ordeal ended when the captain, whose only apparent solution for the leak was to drive faster, agreed to bring the boat to the nearest shore, he said, adding that a police boat eventually showed up.
Daul Sam Ol said that police sent a rescue boat after receiving a distress call and escorted the passenger boat safely to Phsa Krom harbor in Kompong Chhnang, where the hole was welded shut before the boat was allowed to continue on to Phnom Penh. “If the boat had just continued to Phnom Penh, it would have sunk because the hole was getting bigger and bigger,” Daul Sam Ol said, adding that the crew was warned to be more careful in the future.
The boat, owned by Santepheap Boat Passenger, will be repaired and will be inspected by the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, said a member of staff who identified herself as Bopha.
Bopha denied that the passengers had taken over the vessel or that the vessel was ever in danger of sinking. The passengers were unnecessarily nervous, she said.
“It wouldn’t sink. It has a pumping machine,” she said.
Bopha said the company was certain the boat was not damaged when it set off to Phnom Penh.
