Cambodian Jungle Girl.

By Alex in Pictures on Jan 22, 2007 at 4:41 pm

Today’sCellar / Neatorama Image of the Week is the amazing story of Rochom P’ngieng, a Cambodian girl who disappeared at the age of eight and re-appeared now, twenty years later, after living all that time in the deep Cambodian jungle.

Rochom’s story remains a mystery, as she can’t talk (she can only grunt and pat her stomach when she’s hungry). However, proving that karaoke is something more primal than anything else in the world, the "jungle girl" took an instant liking to the family’s collection of karaoke videos!

Lots more photos at: MSN-Mainichi Daily News – Be sure to visit Cellar Image of the Day for more amazing photos!

(Previously on Neatorama, posted by Spluch)

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The Liberal Avenger
Jan 22nd, 2007 at 7:24 pm
I’m convinced that this is a hoax.

Show me ANYPLACE in Southeast Asia where someone can disappear for TWO WEEKS – let alone 19 years!
Nathan M
Jan 23rd, 2007 at 1:09 am
Wow. She looks so unhappy and stressed to be there. I’ll be she wishes she was still swinging in the trees.
Lasse
Jan 23rd, 2007 at 4:43 am
IsnÂ´t there a theory that her family held her captured for 19 years?
Storm
Jan 23rd, 2007 at 6:49 am
I haven’t read about this before but my immediate question is: How come she has forgotten how to talk? She must have done so fluidly at age eight. When people are isolated they continue talking to themselves, at least internally. And even if she didn’t do this, she would remember language like you remember for instance swimming. After a week it would be more or less back.
wikiwiki
Mar 12th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Not so sure about 2 weeks or more, but in 2005 three children (3, 5 and 6) were lost in West Malaysia (the part below Thailand) for 5 days. They were eventually found by trackers.
I think 19 years without ANY human interaction is stretching it, so my guess is that she was lost when she was a kid some people found her, she ran away, got found again, ran again. Might have suffered some trauma that made her forget.
Just a guess.
Nessa
Mar 16th, 2007 at 6:39 am
Hmmmm….. some how i do beleive this’s a real LOST, also beleive that she’s not alone in the Jungle for that 19 Years, must be an adult who’s help her OR make her to served his/her during that long long 19 years in the Jungle. That person could be a Criminal person who’s can not live in a real society and has to hidden in the Junlge AND he or he/she must be too lonely. If it a TRUE LOST Khmer government should take this case in to consider, how many Khmer boy/girl still hidden in the Jungle. This is a Kinaped case not just A missing girl and let forget about it! .
Daniel
Jul 26th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Is this a hoax? Back in the late 80s, there was another story very much like this one, where Vietnamese villagers set up an ambush for whoever or whatever had apparently been sneaking into villages in the area at night and stealing chickens, one at a time, for months. To their surprise, the villagers captured a disheveled nude teenage girl with poorly-cut hair who was only about four-and-a-half feet tall and very skinny. When they finally got government officials involved, the villagers had been holding the naked girl all tied up and gagged all the time for over two weeks because, they said, she thrashed about wildly and was dangerous, and the only sounds she made were unintelligible shrieks that disturbed the village children.

This girl was also Cambodian, and had to be coaxed back into using language because she had lived in the surrounding jungle for over ten years and lost her vocabulary, forgetting what words meant. The officials got enough of her story to know that she had escaped a Khmer Rouge execution squad who had killed her family when she had been about five years old, and she had apparently hidden from all human contact in the jungle since then. That made her about sixteen years old when she was captured. This girl also insisted on constantly taking off all the clothes she had been given, and eventually vanished, probably back into the jungle. This story sounds eerily like the Rochom case, except that no one knew who this girl was or claimed she was their daughter.
sammy
Sep 25th, 2007 at 11:45 am
this girl is so amazing that she can live in the jungle by her self with all the wild animals….i wouldn’t believe this unitl i read the article….her parents must be devestated……i’m happy that they found her….i’m also a Cambodian gril and hope that one day she’ll learn 2 talk our language…..KHMER PRIDE
sammy
Sep 25th, 2007 at 11:47 am
life is comlicated……but hse is tough n brave…….WELCOME HOME!!!
Nissa
Feb 27th, 2008 at 4:56 am
What I dont get is how in the hell did she get lost in the first place? and why didnt her family go looking for her? i mean 19 years wtf thats half of her life living in the jungle i would be fuckin scared out of my mind and would even worst hate my family for not even caring then all of a sudden shes gonna just pop out of no where after 19 years like hi yall i was on a vacation and i forgot how to speak how do they even know what she was to look like now after being gone so long if i was her id stay there after all her only real family was the birds and the bee’s this doesnt make sense at all to me can u tell im pissed? lol
Zaki Hashem Chowdhury
Jun 2nd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Listen mam, this story is not a new one. We have red this story some 2-3 years back in news papers in our country (Bangladesh) and some follow ups also. I have also read this story at a Saudi Arabian news paper and some web sites. The story is true (as we think that it is posible). In people of countries like ours and others of asia are some times very poor in some places. The things those are imposible in countrys like europe or america are posible round here. Any thing is posible round here. About the langeage probleme, it is very much posible that even a person age-ing 12-15 can forgate his/her own language if he could not practice it for a long time. I my myself is
a proof of this kind.

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