Khmers, Russians, and Policeman, OH MY!

I have a lot of updates and stories for you but I won't write them all one at a time so you won't be stuck reading an obnoxiously long blog post.  This one will be long enough as it is. This first story happened yesterday.  It is a testament to how ineffectual and corrupt the police are in this country.   This is the story as I have come to understand it. I was getting bits and pieces from people while it was going on and obviously I'm never going to know exactly what happened from start to finish but I did witness some of it myself so I'll tell you the story as it has been relayed to me and you can decide for yourself.


So a Russian guy walks into a moto shop.  He already rented a moto from these people but it trying to exchange it for another one.  The owner says that there were 2 liters of gas in the tank and now they were asking for money for it (I originally heard the story that the Russian brought the bike back and it was damaged or broken in some way and he refused to pay for it or take responsibility but it was later revised to the gas story).  Apparently the Russian guy refused to pay and the Khmer man who owns the shop said they wouldn't give him his passport back if he didn't pay.  Things started getting heated I assume because soon punches were being thrown (I don't know who threw the first punch though) and the Khmer people closed the door of the shop and locked him in and took out an iron wrench and began beating the Russian.  This is when I started watching and a huge crowd formed around this shop.  I mean HUGE.


So after this point I pretty much know what happens for sure, the starts of this fight were just speculation from other people but at the point when he was locked in the shop and getting beat with an iron wrench is when I started witnessing the event. His girlfriend was outside the shop going trying to do something because her boyfriend was getting the shit beat out of him.  Finally, about 5-10 minutes went by and the cops finally came and made the Khmer people open the door of the shop.  When they opened the door, the wife of the owner tried holding the Russian back from running and the Russian out of instinct or because he was still scared he was being beaten or out of anger, hit the wife in the arm pretty hard.  So then the police came and were probably trying to sort things out.  The moto that the Russian initially brought back was smashed to pieces in the shop, I don't know if it was the Khmer people that did that while they were beating the Russian or if the Russian did it or a combination of the two things.  And the Khmer people started telling the police the Russian was trying to steal the moto and that the Russian threatened to come into their house and break everything in it but I'm not sure about the truth in this because this man is known to not be a good person.  So the police where there but then the owner's son drove up on his moto and apparently this guy is a psycho.  So he comes in and starts to get fired up and then about 8 Khmer men start beating on the Russian guy again, in front of everyone, with the police standing right there, in front of a huge crowd of onlookers. The police couldn't do anything to stop it.  It lasted about 2 minutes or so before the police finally stopped it.  The Russian guy pretty much ran away and went to a doctor's office because he now had a huge gash over his eyebrow and welts and bruises and scratches all over his body from the iron wrench.


He was in the doctor's office for about 2 minutes and went next door to the police station.  He was is the police station for hours.  We heard from someone there that the Russian guy now had to pay 500 dollars to the owner of the shop.  By the way, the owner and all the people that beat the guy weren't arrested or even taken to the police station.   So this Russian guy gets beat, for whatever reason, by multiple people who have a weapon and have locked him in their shop and then beat him again out on the street where no less than 100 people saw and the police were standing right there, and the Russian has to pay 500 dollars to the Khmer people who beat him and the Khmer people are unaffected but 500 dollars richer. This doesn't seem right to me.


Most of this story is just guesses of what happened and gossip around the incident so I wouldn't believe everything but I did see this guy get jumped in front of the police by 8 Khmer men, I saw his bruises and wounds when he left, and I saw him go into the police station and then finally leave hours and hours later. I also saw the smashed moto and I saw the situation outside when he was locked inside the building getting beaten.  So those are the things I know for sure.


 Also, a lot of other Russians showed up at the scene after the first Russian guy left.  They looked around and hopped on their moto and left.  Apparently, according to some of the people that I hang out with, the Russian mafia is a big thing here.  You don't mess with the Russians here. They have tons of money and are scary mafia people that will kill and do anything to protect their own.  I don't know how much of that is truth either.  There do seem to be a lot of Russians and they seem to have money but I don't know about the whole mafia underground cartel thing.  And they said the police here were scared of the Russians and won't get in their way. So according to the people I hang out with, this isn't over.  The Russians will do something to retaliate.  But I'm not so convinced.  Oh well.  We'll see. I'm putting some pictures on here of the scene yesterday.  It amazed me how BIG the crowd got.  It was huge!  

This was the crowd right before the Khmer men beat up the Russian the second time.  They blocked off almost 6 lanes of traffic.  And the 2 police officers did nothing to break up the crowd.  They stayed there for a good 45 minutes total.  Insanity.

Well that's my story.  I'll be posting more shortly so stay tuned!  This was the most interesting thing to happen to me in months.