Horrors inside the 15-year cruise from hell that left passengers stranded in Cambodia: Swinging couples, deaths… and alleged demands from crew for money as situation got ‘critical’

It was billed as an endless round the world cruise that would let you ‘explore the world without leaving home.’

Launched in September 2024, residents onboard the Villa Vie Odyssey paid up to $440,000 for 15 years at sea in their own cabin. The plan was to visit 425 destinations in 147 countries, including Antarctica.

But – after just two years on the ocean – the Odyssey abruptly ceased operations on Monday leaving passengers stranded in Cambodia.

And the Daily Mail can now reveal that life on board the ship was for some time not as rosy as Villa Vie claimed it to be.

Florida-based Villa Vie Residences blamed the spiraling cost of fuel since the Iran War began as the reason for the shut down.

Current and former passengers, however, claimed that the enterprise was ‘doomed from the start’ after a four-and-a-half month delay setting sail in 2024 left Villa Vie in a financial black hole.

They claimed the air conditioning and internet frequently went off and that the pool was often out of service.

Meals were starchy ‘canteen food’ designed to fill people up even if it was unhealthy: fries, potatoes and mac-and-cheese were often served at the same meal.

Four people have filed lawsuits against Villa Vie Residences, including two in federal court – with one woman claiming she was removed from the vessel over her ‘negativity.’

Those are unlikely to be the last legal cases involving the Odyssey, which had around 200 passengers onboard when it made its final stop in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, last Friday.

On Tuesday at about 6.30am, the message went out to passengers that they had seven hours to get off the boat with all their belongings.

What followed next was, according to one guest, ‘chaos’ – with people cramming their belongings into suitcases in the corridors.

People were suddenly stranded in the 90F Cambodian heat, with Villa Vie not paying for any accommodation.

According to Randy Cassingham, who had been traveling on board with his wife, Kit, the cruise line has agreed to arrange a charter flight back to the US at a cost of $1,100 per person.

On his website, Cassingham wrote that passengers were told: ‘No passport returned until your bill is paid.’

He said: ‘They want the last penny, even though we all have already paid for November.’

Passengers who tried to go back to their cabins found them ‘sealed’ by security, Cassingham wrote.

It was a very different experience from the one sold to them in the summer of 2024, when the Odyssey was supposed to be embarking on its maiden voyage from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

The company website claimed residents could travel ‘continuously around the world while enjoying the comfort, stability, and community of home.’

Cabins with a view were priced at $440,000 for 15 years, or less for one with no windows.

Widow Cheryl Ethrington, who boarded the Odyssey eight months ago, paid $365,000 for a cabin that she hoped would be her home for the rest of her life.

Using the life insurance money from her late husband, the 68-year-old spent another $50,000 on a package that included free manicures, pedicures, massages and doctor visits.

‘I bought the Golden Passport package,’ she said from a Sihanoukville apartment she had to scramble to rent.

‘I paid in advance for the next 15 or 20 years of my life. It was a boat load of money.’

Another passenger who boarded at the start of the trip was Shirene Thomas, 61, an actress from Madison, Wisconsin.

She told the Daily Mail that she paid in the low six figures for what should have been a three-year trip on the Odyssey, meaning she lost out on her final year.

‘We did go to six continents and I adopted the world’s first cruising kittens, which I adopted on the cruise, so there were good sides,’ she said. 

But Thomas admitted she soon began to get frustrated with day-to-day life on board. 

‘I don’t believe we ever went more than three days without a problem with HVAC, no hot water, no internet.

‘I was disappointed in the food. We initially got cruise-ship food which looked good and was supposed to be fancy.

‘Then it became more similar to cafeteria-style food, trying to serve people on a limited budget and trying to make it calorically dense.

‘I kept trying to get them to understand we wanted healthy food, but that costs more. If I complained, I was told it was my fault.’

Breakfast was usually tan or cream-colored foods and dinner would often be starchy like mac-and-cheese, potatoes or French fries and lots of root vegetables.

Eggplant was frequently on the menu as was lamb, which was often overcooked, Thomas said.

Cassingham, a former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee, described the Odyssey as ‘hardly a luxury cruise ship.’

‘The cabins were small and sparse, but that was OK: cabins were really our bedrooms and a place to shower,’ he said. 

‘The living area was spacious: Lounges and restaurants to meet and talk. But it wasn’t ‘luxury’ – it was promoted, after all, as ‘affordable’ and it was, until the company started begging for money.’ 

According to one former passenger, cracks began to show on the 30-year-old vessel, formerly known as the MS Braemar, before it sailed out of Belfast.

Joe Rhodes, who spent just over a year on the Odyssey before leaving last November when it docked in Australia, told the Daily Mail that ‘there were a lot of signs early on that it was poorly run.’ 

He recalled the four-and-a-half months the ship had to remain in Belfast for repairs and passengers were made to stay in a local hotel. 

‘The reason some of us stayed the whole time, [staff] were constantly telling us we were going to be there for a few days,’ he said. ‘They kept stringing us on and making a lot of promises they didn’t fulfill.’

Villa Vie did not reimburse Rhodes the money he had paid for the Belfast hotel and instead gave him credits worth $8,000.

Rhodes made the decision to leave the boat once he used up his credit, refusing to spend any more money on Villa Vie, he said. 

‘They were in a deep hole from the first day,’ he said. ‘They were never able to dig themselves out of it.’

Adding to his frustration was that the boat began missing stops including Antarctica, which was one of the reasons he signed up.

‘The other great deception was that they promised people Antarctica was on the itinerary. The ship was never equipped to go there and they had to know that,’ he said. 

Rhodes also spoke of the insular world aboard the Odyssey, where gossip was rife and little remained private among passengers. He described it as ‘a combination of being in a small town and junior high.’

‘A land of gossip and consequences. I can’t prove it got as far as people being swingers, but we had suspicions,’ Rhodes said. 

‘When you’re that close in close quarters with that many people, you end up knowing more about their lives than you want to know.

‘We know who had gotten together and who had broken up. There were a couple of marriages on board. There were three or four deaths.

‘There was one divorce, but one of the marriages was from a former couple who were on the boat. The guy’s wife didn’t love him and married someone else on the ship,’ Rhodes recalled.

He admits that, while he ‘liked most of the people on board,’ passengers quickly divided into cliques.

‘One group were called “the cheerleaders”. They got mad at you if you complained about anything.

‘Some of us were happy to complain. I was one of the loudest, so we quickly got divided into pro or anti-Villa Vie.’ 

The ill feeling toward critics like Rhodes escalated to the point where he felt like a ‘traitor.’

Shirene Thomas painted a similar picture and said she was threatened to be thrown off the Odyssey twice.

‘When management is mismanaging funds and when realistic people see the writing on the wall and try to say anything, they were bullied and shut down by the cheerleaders,’ she told the Daily Mail. 

‘The atmosphere was reinforced from the top down. One of the times they threatened to kick me off the ship was because my negative attitude supposedly prevented someone from buying a cabin.

‘When they know you have cats and have given up all you own and someone threatens to throw you off the ship, that is emotionally abusive.’

One woman who did get thrown off the ship was Jenny Phenix, 70, a divorced mother-of-two who sold all her possessions before boarding the Odyssey. 

Trouble began after her WhatsApp messages criticizing Villa Vie found their way to the company’s leadership.

According to a lawsuit she filed, she was removed from the boat for what the company called her ‘negativity.’ 

In statements, Villa Vie has claimed Phenix ‘broke multiple terms and conditions and signed a non-disclosure agreement.’ 

According to another case, filed in Florida’s Broward County court, former resident Robert Moses claimed that Villa Vie put his cabin up for sale after he complained about noise from the pickleball court and the lack of a golf simulator, among other advertised amenities.

In the court papers, Moses said he paid $469,000 for his cabin, which gave him the right to live there for 15 years. 

Villa Vie denies his breach-of-contract suit and said that it was entitled to install the pickleball court and ‘not obliged’ to provide amenities like pools, hot tubs or a golf simulator as Moses demanded.

Fears that the end of the ship would come had been mounting on the boat for months.

Ethrington claimed that, during the penultimate stop in Thailand, everyone knew the ship was in trouble.

After arriving in Cambodia, Villa Vie asked passengers to pay an extra $1,800 to cover fuel, which would have been about $360,000 total, she said.

‘This was three or four days before they evicted us,’ she said. ‘They said, “We’re in a critical state and we cannot leave the port.”‘

The future of the Odyssey is now murky, with Villa Vie’s parent company saying they will take the next 60 days to ‘restructure and recapitalize.’

Some passengers are discussing forming a group to take over the ownership, but that seemed very uncertain.

Prior to that, according to Thomas, the cruise line had solicited additional money by offering discounted cabins as investment opportunities and promising to return ‘the interest on them when they’re sold.’ 

‘They had been hitting people up for more money for a long, long time,’ she said. 

Ethrington said that she went into the voyage with her ‘eyes open’ and was not angry – even though she knew she would never get her money back.

‘The money is gone,’ she said. ‘They are broke. I am personally OK, but I’m angry that a lot of people really came into this without thinking about it.

‘I knew it was a startup and it could fail. I cannot get a refund. I still have a house I can go back to but there’s people that sold their houses and their cars and all of their belongings and bought their cabin on the ship.

‘Now they have to go home and all they have is their Social Security check.’

The Daily Mail has contacted Villa Vie for comment.