Day 256: Ream National Park

The majority of us went on a tour of Ream National Park for our second day in Sihanoukville. Despite the van we were travelling in already been quite full, we still found room to fit Roger in for the ride with us (Roger, you'll remember, is a large inflatable dinosaur). We drove to the river at the edge of the park then took a boat along the river, surrounded by mangrove forests.

The boat stopped in a small village, and we walked through a few farms and outlying buildings as we headed towards the woods. Near the edge of the woods was a small Christian school, and the park guide's reaction to it gives a little insight into religion in Cambodia. He described it as follows. "This is the school by the Christians to advertise the Jesus god. You know the Jesus god?" Now, there's a few things going on here. Using the word advertising to describe missionary work is amusing, but probably pretty accurate. The more interesting part is calling Jesus a god (also, true, by Christian beliefs, but not as I'm sure our guide meant it) and especially just treating him as just one more god among many that the Christians happen to worship. Cambodia is almost entirely Buddhist, at least on paper, but we got a bit deeper insight on how they treat religion back when we were in Siem Reap. Angkor Wat was originally built as a Hindu temple, and despite it later being converted, there are still a lot of Hindu statues in it. What's more, all the local Buddhist villagers will go to pray at the Hindu statues. They go to pray for good luck, good crops, healthy children, and for them it's just the process of praying and giving an offering that matters, and the actual god it's directed at isn't all that important. On our travels we saw a mix of Buddhism, Hinduism, Animism and, apparently the Jesus god, all, for the most part, practiced by the same people claiming the same religion.

We walked for maybe half an hour through the woods with our local guide pointing out different plants and animals. The beach itself, when we got to it, was beautiful. We were practically the only people there, and a few hours of swimming, walking along the beach and lying in the sun was a nice way to spend the afternoon. The guys running our tour also brought a picnic-style lunch that was delicious as well.

The final two stops were brief. First we went out to a waterfall in the area, but we didn't stay long enough to really do anything there. Last, we stopped by the road to give our picnic leftovers to some local monkeys. I don't know where the monkey got a hold of the red bull from - it wasn't from us - but I wasn't above taking pictures of it!