Stranded cruise ship Odyssey leaves Cambodia with no passengers

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Stranded cruise ship Odyssey leaves Cambodia with no passengers

2026-11-04 19:22 Last Updated At：19:30

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A U.S. cruise ship that forced all its passengers to disembark in Cambodia after suspending its operations last week has departed the Southeast Asian nation with only crew aboard, Cambodian officials said Wednesday.

The MV Odyssey, owned by Florida-based Villa Vie Residences, had been on an around-the-world cruise when it suspended its planned three-year voyage due to the sharp rise in fuel costs.

It had been docked for a scheduled stop at the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville on the Gulf of Thailand, when on Oct. 28 its 203 passengers were suddenly told they had to disembark within a few hours.

The ship left Sihanoukville late Tuesday with only crew and other personnel on board, said Tang Sochetkresna, director of the Tourism Department of Preah Sihanouk province. He said he didn't know the ship's next destination.

He said that nearly 100 passengers remained in Sihanoukville, while others were visiting other parts of Cambodia or had traveled on to other countries. Most of the ship's passengers were Americans.

The ship, with its 650-passenger capacity, had 156 crew members on board, but it was not clear how many departed with the ship.

There has been no official announcement of future plans for the cruise ship. Media reports suggested that a creditor had taken over its management and was having it sailed to Singapore, Southeast Asia’s main maritime hub.

The abrupt end to the ship's voyage has drawn widespread attention because it had touted itself as a floating home, combining long-term living at sea with global travel.

Several passengers said they had paid more than $300,000 for a suite for the lifetime of the vessel.

Villa Vie Residences said monthly fuel expenses per cabin that historically averaged $1,800 have reached an estimated $6,000 to $8,000 in parts of Asia due to the war in Iran.

The company said it sought to reduce fuel consumption by slowing the itinerary and spending more time in port, but was unable to offset the surging costs.

Traffic has been curtailed in the Strait of Hormuz since the war in Iran began, squeezing supplies of all kinds of petroleum-based fuels, especially in Southeast Asia, and sharply increasing prices.

Passengers had said the company had been asking them for several months for contributions to keep the ship operating, and there has been an active debate on social media over whether its operation was ever financially viable.

Built in 1993 and operated under different names by several cruise lines over the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Odyssey was bought by Villa Vie Residences in 2023.

Its current cruise began in October 2024 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the ship had been refitted. A second cruise, along with the purchase of a second ship to operate in a similar capacity, had already been planned.

The Latest: Voters give Democrats control of Congress in rebuke to Trump

Democrats have won control of Congress in Tuesday’s 2026 midterm elections in a widespread repudiation of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, a drubbing that reached deep into reliable GOP territory.

Democrats flipped at least seven Senate seats in ruby-red states and battlegrounds alike: Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. They held on to battleground seats in Georgia and Michigan. In the House, Democrats flipped more than two dozen districts, some that voted for Trump by double digits in 2024.

Democrats Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Amy Acton in Ohio, Rob Sand in Iowa and Gina Hinojosa in Texas won races for governor, flipping GOP-held offices.

Trump faces a profoundly reshaped Washington for the last two years of his presidency. Democrats will have the power to block his legislative agenda, reject his appointees and investigate his administration.

After telling voters repeatedly to “pretend I’m on the ballot,” Trump tried to shift the blame away from himself, saying Democrats “did a good job” in their campaigns and blaming GOP candidates for losses. Most voters appear to blame his administration for high costs and want Congress to impose more checks on him, according to The AP Voter Poll.

Here's the latest:

Trump has no public events scheduled for Wednesday, according to the White House, following Democrats’ resounding midterm election wins that will give them control of the House and the Senate for his final two years in office.

The Republican president spoke to Fox News Channel for an interview that aired early Wednesday, saying Democrats “did a good job” and faulting GOP candidates for their losses. “I don’t view it as a hit on me,” he said.

Trump had all but guaranteed the results would be seen as a referendum on him by repeatedly urging voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” But the results showed how voters rejected his handpicked candidates while airing widespread concerns about high costs following the Iran war and his punishing tariff policy.

The results leave Trump — who watched returns at the White House with his advisers and members of his Cabinet — with dramatically diminished political capital at home and abroad.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham says the midterm results show the importance of ending the Iran war, which has sent fuel prices soaring.

“The world has an opportunity now to unite around the issue that is affecting us all, and that’s the cost of living,” he said.

Burnham said he would be “working for de-escalation” in the Middle East and urging other leaders to do the same.

He said: “I can’t get people’s cost of living pressures down until the conflict in the Middle East is resolved (and) the conflict in Ukraine started by Russia. These are the things we have to focus on now, and I hope the world has a moment to do that.”

“While the outcome of this midterm is not what we’d hoped and fought for, a new battle is just beginning,” the Republican speaker said overnight on social media.

Johnson is expected to face a challenge from Republican rivals if he tries to stay on as GOP leader in the new Congress, which Democrats will control after the midterm rout. He did not immediately address his plans.

He said, “come 2028, we WILL take back the House and we will finish the job.”

Across the country, states elected a wave of governors who are the first Black, Latina or female leaders of their respective states.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, the only current Black governor, won reelection on Tuesday. Republican Byron Donalds in Florida and Democrat David Crowley in Wisconsin were elected as the first Black governors in their states.

Latino Democrats also will take on the highest state office in two of the biggest states. Texas voters rejected Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in favor of Gina Hinojosa, who will be the state’s first Latina governor. And Xavier Becerra, a former California attorney general, outpaced Republican Steve Hilton. Becerra will be California’s first Latino governor since Romualdo Pacheco in 1875.

Meanwhile, Tennessee elected its first female governor. Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn beat Democrat Jerri Green, a Memphis city councilwoman.

The country’s first Black female governor, the first Native American female governor, the first Native female senator and the first openly gay male U.S. senator had been declared winners on Tuesday.

By early Wednesday, the first Muslim U.S. senator was added to the list of barrier-breaking milestones.

The astonishing Democratic wave also means the United States will likely have its first-ever Black speaker of the House.

“These firsts show how our country is changing,” Alexis Anderson-Reed, president and CEO of State Voices, a network of advocates for civic engagement and equity in democracy, said in an email.

A California measure to tax the net worth of billionaires that divided liberal leaders nationally and triggered one of the most expensive ballot fights in state history was too early to call Wednesday morning as the vote tally continued.

Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of Californians whose net worth exceeds $1 billion, with most of the revenue dedicated to replacing federal funding cuts to healthcare. The measure left ultra-rich people, some of whom spent heavily to defeat it, scrambling to figure out whether they would pay the tax or leave California.

After more than a decade with Donald Trump at the epicenter of U.S. politics, most voters appear exhausted and exasperated by him, according to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of midterm voters in all 50 states.

The president’s failure to deliver on key promises — most prominently, his vows to tame inflation, which has worsened instead — clearly weighed on his fellow Republicans in Tuesday’s midterm elections for the House and the Senate. The polling shows that voters generally saw Trump as being more focused on his own fortune and gold-leafed existence than their needs.

The president also helped elevate candidates with obvious flaws, amplifying their struggles in an already challenging year.

But the poll also contains a serious note of caution for Democrats. Many voters dislike the party — and while Democrats hold an advantage on key issues such as the economy, their edge is relatively slim. About 7 in 10 voters said that Congress isn’t doing enough to provide checks and balances for the president, setting the bar for Democrats who won back the Senate and the House.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says the Democrats taking control of the House and the Senate in the U.S. midterms is going to “introduce a new era in world relations.”

Ramaphosa says he hopes South Africa will be able to improve its bilateral relationship with the United States after his country became a target for criticism during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Trump’s Republican administration has made several moves against South Africa’s government, which he has baselessly accused of discriminating against its white minority. Those moves include excluding South Africa from meetings of the Group of 20 countries this year in the U.S. and suspending it from AGOA, a key U.S.-Africa trade program.