We left the monastery bright and early, while the nuns were having mass, and had a relatively easy time getting back to the city center by public bus. We were not charged double this time, but we did have to stand. As I suspected the nuns loaded us down with food for the trip which was a mixed blessing because it gave us more to carry around.

Then on to the "luxury bus" ride to Cambodia. Initially we sat on the front row but then realized it was assigned seating and we were placed in the next to the last row. Around a two hour rie to the border and the ticket taker wanted $24 to process our visas from the western tourists. An Irish girl griped about it being only $20 and said we would do it ourselves. All went fairly smoothly at the border, it was indeed $20 for the visa and another $1 for a health card, but when we came out we found the bus had already gone 4 km down the road with the Asian riders. Motorbikes were hired to take us--I lost my sunglasses on the trip.

Below is a photo of the bus. The buses seem to be used to carry cargo as well as people, and we were forced to put much of our large bags in the rack above our heads. All was okay until about an hour into Cambodia we crossed a river on a ferry and then the road got extremely bumpy. It appeared that the racks were going to break away from the roof. The ticket taker came back and held them for a while--it reduced the squeaking but I don't see how he could have held all that weight if one side had given way.
We arrived in Phnom Penh with our heads intact. A driver was not there to meet us but the bus service telephoned Sunday House and they quickly had a van to whisk us off to the family run hotel. It is not in the river front area where most of the tourist hotels are located, it is in a more residential area.
We had a second floor room. This is the balcony on the third floor looking onto the front street.
From the balcony in back of the building you could see this Chinese elementary school, with dozens of boys and girls crowding the balconies.
This is the smaller balcony on the second floor.
Our room had three beds--convenient to store our belonging on the center bed.

The shower had a small heater that heated the water while you showered.
The lobby had a small restaurant, where we ate most of our meals, internet access for a dollar an hour, and a large television. The first night they showed s-21 and the second night they showed The Killing Fields--both of which depicted things we would see in the city.
This is the street in front of the hotel.
As usual the hotel had an extremely steep stairway.