There are different types of homelessness and it isn’t always obvious who is or is not homeless, especially in the tropics. In the Western country I grew up in, if you want to sleep out you have to dress a certain way or you’ll freeze to death, and so you look a certain way, there’s no easy way to stay clean or buy cheap clothes.

This isn’t the case in Phnom Pehn. It’s possible to sit up in 24 hour businesses, sleeping in a chair, washing clothes in a sink or simply buying new for a few cents, sharing food. So many people are living like this. My friend Annette (Saven Soen 04/04/1989) had this lifestyle. She is the first person who spoke to me when I found the only back room (illegally) open at the height of covid. If it had have been any other time I would have stayed away because she was unwashed, hallucinating, spoke no English – but during those strange, unprecedented times nothing like that mattered, the world had gone insane, there was no normal.

She radiated friendliness and was a people magnet. I resisted her company for a long time because, I just didn’t know people like that. But as Covid, and the ensuing loneliness and isolation dragged on, I gave up resistance and bought some street food and as I got to know her, that innate friendliness overrode everything else and essentially changed my life.

Over time, I got used to mental illness, accepting someone who is babbling, hallucinating and unwashed (I’ll be direct, the smell also, sometimes of homelessness and sometimes homelessness and meth). I passed the time by me buying a phrasebook and practicing Khmer with her, and as all these people gravitated towards her, I got to know the entire community.

People who knew her tell me she was quite stunning before her demise. For around a decade, as far as I can work out, she worked as a ‘taxi’, had a son and long-term relationship and was somewhat of an alpha-female on the scene. Of course, by the time I got to know her, she was suffering from full-blown stimulant induced psychosis (SIP) (although I didn’t know at all what that was at the time). The thing is with her that I don’t know when she started methamphetamine. A study I’ve mentioned elsewhere cites the frequency of use as a factor (for SIP); was she using for the whole decade or only towards the tail end? There is never any point in asking anyone as no one I’ve ever met considers themselves a heavy user, mainly because the high lasts for days and so people don’t need to take large amounts.

Anyway, she died very suddenly one morning. I’ve written about it elsewhere and was deeply affected. I remember her complaining of stomach pain and being tired for a few days previous. My other friend, Srei Mao, died of similar symptoms (which was diagnosed as stomach cancer) and I want to understand more about the long-term physical effects.

Her life is very similar to Asroam. She had pretty much the same symptoms (of psychosis) by the time I met her, and I knew her for a few years. She’s Vietnamese and babbles in that language, although she took better care of her hygiene and must have smoked very discreetly as I never saw nor smelt it (though I asked directly and she told me she was using). Again, people tell me that for around a decade she was normal, pretty successful and had a permanent Korean boyfriend.

She developed some kind of a problem with her neck, like a tumour or something, and the (absent) partner paid for her to go to Singapore for an operation, which was successful, but when she returned she became insane quite quickly, started babbling to herself, but also collecting these necklaces, she would find them and repair them and never take them off but it went to the point that she was wearing hundreds at any time looked absurd.

Both Annette and Asroam were able to live sleeping in chairs in 24 hour bars. Annette was tolerated as she would push drinks to customers and Asroam would clean. This wasn’t a formal arrangement, Asroam was just industrius, hard working – even though she had no formal job. She would find discarded cleaning equipment or borrow it from a shop, clean for free, then clean the road, the path, the toilets, just for the sake of doing it. She used to find little plants that were sprouting from cracks in the pavement and transplant them into public flowerpots. There was a large part of the local path that was collapsing due to tree root damage and all the tiles were cracked and she started repairing this. Because of this she was also tolerated by the surrounding businesses, sleeping and washing in the complex of bars that were there at the time.

Annette died before it all these placed were bought up and closed down to make way for luxury apartments, but Asroam was alive and it was hard for her because she had to transition to street sleeping.

There are NGO’s that take people overnight and I know Annette used them occasionally, but I also notice that the Vietnamese population are loathe to use them. I’m not sure if that is a cultural issue or they don’t have the right ID but they often form their own sub-communities. She did OK for a while, I used to pay her to do all my sewing, and, as I said, she (without being asked) she would clean up a wider area of local businesses, the street, collect trash and be generally useful and because of this was given food, allowed to sleep outside places. It’s reasonalby safe (to western standards) to do this in 24 hour busy areas in Phnom Pehn.

The last time I saw her she was in the street. I’d needed all my socks sewing up for ages but never knew when I would pass her. I saw her and waiting in the street while she did it. I told her I was going to Kampot and would see her when I got back, and when I got back, she was gone.

Over the next couple of weeks, a number of people came and (knowing I knew her) would ask if I’d seen her. Inspite of the hallucinations and communications issues, she was missed by many people. It isn’t uncommon for homeless people to go missing. The police regularly round people up from the streets and hold them in camps, sometimes for up to six months. It’s technically illegal, but when they resurface (straight back into homelessness) I have to be honest and say that they look a lot better. Usually they’ve put weight on and if they had the skin problems that meth can cause, then it’s usually cleared up. That usually lasts for around a week – and then they descend right back to where they were, in terms of health, appearance and circumstances, which underlines again the need for more permanent solutions for people here. (I’m speaking generally there, Asroam was always well-kept and healthy considering her circumstances).

The point is that this kind of hidden homelessness exists here and it goes under the radar. In the examples of two friends that I’ve given, it’s a permanent situation because there are no long-term prospects and then the psychosis starts, possibly because of increased ice use? But once it’s clinical and irreversible, then the lifestyle is set.

This kind of homelessness can also be short term and on again off again. I know people (including broke foreigners) who live like this for a couple of weeks until something else turns up. It’s kind of unique where I hang out because there is a sympathetic lady there running an establishment that not only tolerates discrete sleeping, knowing full well of their situation, she looks after essential ID cards where appropriate (many homeless don’t have them and if lost, all bets are off). The main danger is that the 24 hour business where this kind of emergency measure (living there) is possible, it is beside (and somewhat permiates) the slum where ice (methamphetamine) use and trade is normalized and centred, and so this is really the red flag where a short-term solvable housing issue can easily go off the rails and descend into a wholly ruined life (not dramatic, … fact).

I want to finish by stating that, in my opinion (mirrored in the research I presented elsewhere on the site) that local opinion is also a part of the problem. I mention it as I have many memories of cruelty from local people towards Asroam and my other friends. Asroam only had a little carrier bag of possessions, but being industrius and hard working, she had clippers, sewing stuff, beauty tools etc. to sell services, and every now and again, security guards would wrestle it off her and take great delight in dropping in onto a fire in the car park. She would wait and cry as it was everything she owned and it took time and effort to replace it all. I’ve also seen a lot of pubic beatings (usually from money lenders) but never help or sympathy. There are people living from dana (the Buddhist word for generosity) but locals, I notice, tend to give to the very old or obviously disabled. Anyone else is considered deserving of their fate. Of course, many people I try and help have psychosis that would be considered a disability in the west, but there is a general problem of ‘othering’ here. Homeless people (or those housed insecurely) are depersonalized. They’re not considered people with history. This general attitude also affects policy, which tends towards compulsion and things which are perceived as punishments. My friends who have been rounded up at some point (often multiple times) into the homeless camps refer to them (without conscious thought) as prisons. Possibly by actually sharing people’s stories, perhaps there could be a ‘re-personalization’ and re-thinking of attitudes.

I’ll finish with some pictures of Asroam, as she loved to be pictured, often insisting that I take multiple shots each time we bumped into each other.