Time to get back to the mainland...by 8am we were waiting by the 'beach' with our rucksacks, for our return boat trip. Eventually we were all herded into one of three boats and we were away...then we got stuck. We arrived back on the mainland but were told that our bus wouldn't be leaving until 9:30am! The reason for this seemed to be so that we could fill in our Cambodian visa paperwork and hand it, along with our passports, to a guy who was offering to take care of the border formalities for us without us having to get off the bus at the border. He claimed that the visa cost $29 and he was only charging $1 for his service, making a grand total of $30 each...we knew that the visas were more like $20-$23 each but we paid anyway to save ourselves any hassle at the border. We got talking to a few other people who were doing it so at least we would all be stranded together if anything shuld happen to our passports!

After a baguette breakfast, we eventually set off for the looooong journey to Phnom Penh. It didn't take long to reach the border and our guy disappeared with the huge stack of passports to get our visas. People who'd decided not to use his services got off the bus to get their own visas sorted and we later discovered that they'd paid $27 each after Cambodian 'visa fees' were added on, so we'd really only lost $3 by getting it done for us - not too bad!

After a bit of a wait on the bus (which had turned into a sauna while we were at the border since they'd turned off the engine and therefore the AC) for no apparent reason, we were off and into Cambodia! First impressions were that it looked a lot like Laos, but we soon began to notice small changes in their style of houses, plus people wearing what looked like pyjamas, which apparently keep you cool in the scorching heat! Maybe we should both invest in a pair...

The rest of the bus journey was uneventful and we eventually arrived in Phnom Penh at about 9pm - 12 hours after we'd left Don Det! We were greeted at the bus station by a horde of tuk-tuk drivers all selling rooms at various guesthouses. We literally had our route off the bus blocked so we couldn't avoid them! We walked past as quickly as we could but one was very persistant and followed us down the road for at least 5 blocks shouting various offers and insults at us, 'Tuk-tuk...I take you to guesthouse...only $1...you are stingy (quite impressed with his English here!)..why you not pay $1....ok free for you!'. If someone was on their own it would be very difficult to refuse, but we stuck to our guns and were in a group of 3 (another guy from the bus had joined us for the walk - safety in numbers!) so we eventually managed to shake him off! They don't give visitors a good first impression of Phnom Penh though...

We headed towards the river and after locating where we were and checking out a couple of guesthouses, we eventually settled on Eurpoe Guesthouse and we're glad we did. The guy on the desk was very friendly and helpful - he understood we were tired and quickly showed us to our room. He also suggested that we visit the night market but we decided to leave that til tomorrow night... We headed up our street, past a lot of 'girlie' bars, until we got to a place called Garden Bar, where we ate a very late tea, and sampled our first Angkor beer. Then it was back to the hotel where we crashed out after an exhausting day!