Family sells house to live on cruise ship: stranded in Cambodia without fuel

Hundreds of Americans stuck on cruise ship due to fuel costs. It was supposed to be the experience of a lifetime, circumnavigating the globe by ship, but instead it quickly turned into a terrible misadventure.

The 203 passengers, mainly from the USA, of the MV Odyssey, on which they had chosen to live - in some cases selling their homes and all their possessions - were forced to disembark in the port of Sihanoukville, in Cambodia, because the US operator Villa Vie Residences, based in Florida, announced the immediate suspension of activities due to fuel costs, defined as unsustainable.

The order to abandon ship also affected 156 crew members. And they had just seven hours to gather their belongings and leave the ship. The consequences were very serious: the passengers, who were supposed to spend 755 days on a cruise, were left without housing and, according to various complaints, without operational or financial support from the company.

The company: "Our goal is to provide support to residents, crew and staff"

The abrupt stop came due to the performance of the oil market linked to international geopolitical tensions and the war with Iran. In an official note, the company explained that the average monthly expense for fuel for a single cabin had risen from the initial $1,800 to $6,000-8,000 on Asian routes.

The project of the MV Odyssey, 200 meters long, which left Northern Ireland in October 2024, envisaged the possibility of long stays on board, even up to 5 years, or a lifelong residential formula, paying between 120,000 and 440,000 dollars. “We are no longer able to sustain the resulting operational losses,” Villa Vie Residences said. “Passing the entire cost increase onto residents is not a realistic solution. Now our goal is to provide support to residents, crew and staff.”

Despite the company's reassurances, passengers stranded in the Southeast Asian port described a very different situation. “The company did absolutely nothing to help us: we couldn't even walk out of the port, so they put us on shuttles that dropped us off in the middle of the city,” blogger and passenger Randy Cassingham wrote online.

According to local authorities, the ship is expected to refuel before departing on Saturday.