Sihanoukville to Ho Chi Minh City by Bus

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DAY 32: We had looked around tour operators to find the best way of crossing the boarder from Cambodia to Vietnam, we also asked the hotel we were staying with but they only wanted to sell us tickets with the same company we arrived with - no way! We knew the Mekong Express had the best reputation for service and travel experience and we eventually found a tour operator who could book us seats.
The minibus arrived at 7am to take us to the bus station and we were instantly reassured as the staff labelled our bags and gave us a receipt for them. We also had pre-assigned seat numbers so we weren’t worried about that. All in all it was so much more professional than our previous journey; the staff were extremely friendly and helpful. They provided water and yummy pastries and we settled in to our 4 hour journey to Phnom Penh. Once in Phnom Penh we had a 3 hour wait until the bus was due to leave for Ho Chi Minh so we went to a local bar and had some lunch and played some pool.
At 3pm the bus departed, we gave our passports to the host and he arranged the whole process into Vietnam. At the boarder we had to get out and have our photo taken to exit Cambodia and then again 2 minutes later, with all our bags this time to enter Vietnam. We went through passport control as a group and had our bags scanned and got back on the bus, all in all it took us about 20 minutes. An officer boarded the bus and checked our passports again and then we were free to make the final leg of the journey to Ho Chi Minh arriving at 9.30pm.

We were on the side of the road and having gotten our bags from the bus trying to figure out how to get to our hostel. There were about six or seven taxi drivers determined to take us there but we knew it was no more than a ten min walk and plus we had been warned about taxi drivers trying to take you somewhere else for their own commission. Eventually we found the guest house and after the long day of travelling fell straight asleep in our room.

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