Attacks in Sihanoukville - Crime

Me and my partner and best friend are in Sihanoukville now, after spending 6months travelling in South-East Asia. We have genuinely loved Cambodia so far... until 2 nights ago when we were brutally attacked... TWICE.

My boyfriend and I were walking along the beach in the evening on our way home from a bar, when a Cambodian man ran past, grabbed my bag from my shoulder and bolted into the darkness. (In it was my camera, both our phones, ipods, money etc). We walked about 40 meters from the beach to the main road looking for help. We both looked obviously upset and distressed, and to add insult to injury (or injury to insult in this case) a middle aged white man who was sitting in a tuk-tuk by the road ran at us from behind, beating my boyfriend around the head with a metal bar. I started screaming as my boyfriend fell to the floor, at which point the man turned around, ran at me, and smashed my face in with the bar. He then got back in the tuk-tuk and drove away. He didn't speak, or take anything (we clearly had already been robbed minutes earlier). The tuk-tuk driver, a Cambodian man, just watched. A group of Cambodian people who were sat eating nearby immediately ran away also, clearly not wanting to get involved. We staggered up the street hysterical and bleeding, when another Cambodian man turned up and took us to the police booth. The policeman on duty took one look at us and laughed, telling us it was not his problem, and to go away before he arrested us for disturbing his nap. Within minutes, a group of about 70 people were surrounding us trying to help, including a Cambodian man who said "I saw everything, I was the man's tuk-tuk driver." When asked where he took the man, he promptly changed his story and left. Someone rang the police who were annoyed that there was no money in it for them (they wanted us to pay them to find the criminals), and told us to go to hospital. Some friendly Russian men took us to hospital, paying for the tuk-tuk. The hospital staff would not treat my partner for his head injury, then proceeded to stitch my face up without anaesthetic! Horrific pain. One of the Russian guys helping us was actually weeping seeing the distress we were in. They did not treat me for my clearly broken nose, or ask if we had other injuries. Then, they were reluctant to let us leave because we couldn't pay the bill - even though we explained we had just been robbed and needed to get in touch with our insurance company.

My mum, back home in England, got in touch with a member of the British Embassy based in Sihanoukville, who came to our hotel and helped us. He first took us to the general purpose chief of police who said it was not his problem - we needed to go to the tourist chief of police. We went there, and this policeman accused us of everything being our fault, and told us to go back the next day. We returned the next day to get a police report, which we had to write ourselves, and it had a word limit! They also demanded that we omit the whole metal-bar violent attack part because it would look bad on their records!! We wrote it on anyway because none of them could speak or read English. The British Ambassador told us no investigation would take place, as the police worked pretty much solely on bribes, and even if they did catch the two separate criminals, they would be able to pay off the police so there would be no just outcome.

The horror of this ordeal has left us distressed, traumatised and massively out of pocket (but thankfully our insurance are going to cover it). Since then I have read up about the vast amount of crime that occurs and goes unreported or unsolved in the area. I still love Cambodia, but would advise anyone who visits Sihanoukville to exercise extreme caution, even when traveling in groups. And if you are unlucky enough to experience crime, make sure you get all the correct documentation needed for insurance, and do not have faith in the police.