1. Get from central Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) to the Mien Tay bus station in southern HCMC. We were going to get the bus from the central bus station to the southern bus station, but in the end we couldn't be arsed and we cheated and got a taxi, which was quicker and easier.
2. Get a bus from HCMC to Ha Tien. Ha Tien is a small town near the Vietnam-Cambodian border. The bus from HCMC takes anywhere between 8 and 12 hours depending on where you read the information. We actually managed to get the bus very easily as there were lots of genuinely helpful people at the bus station (and the Vietnamese use the Western alphabet so signs saying "Ha Tien" are readable). I was expecting the bus to be a bit gritty, but to my surprise it was a well air-conditioned sleeper bus - not only did we each have our own bed to stretch out on, but the staff made sure we were next to each other and comfortable, and the bus was clean and comfortable. It was, for example, much cleaner than any of the tourist night sleeper buses we've taken in our journey so far. Of course it being the day we didn't really need a sleeper bus, but it was a pleasant way to travel nonetheless (and Katie of course fell asleep for about 3 hours). The only down side was the loud Vietnamese videos that were shown on board.
The bus route went all through the Mekong delta, providing us with pleasant views of lots of rivers and streams, and lots of rice paddies. If you're interested, go here and you can follow our route: we went from HCMC to My Tho, from there along road 1A to Vinh Long, then 80 to Long Xuyen and then Rach Gia, and finally to Ha Tien. The journey started about 8, and we got to Ha Tien just gone 5, having stopped for a while for lunch on the way. It was dead good.
Alas, once we got near Ha Tien the heavens opened and it started chucking it down with rain. And Ha Tien bus station is outside of the town centre, where we needed to go... so we followed step 3:
3. Get a motorbike from Ha Tien bus station to the Oasis Bar in Ha Tien. There being two of us, with bags, we actually got two motorbikes, one each, with a driver each. It was still smashing it down with rain, so we got a bit wet at this point.
4. From the desk of a travel company handily located in the Oasis Bar, book a private bus ticket to Kampot in Cambodia for the next day (for US $15 each, which we later found out was waaaay more than the same journey would cost in the other direction, so we probably should have haggled it down, but there you go). Have a few beers. Check in to a hotel. Have dinner in the completely deserted one horse town of Ha Tien (horse not seen). Go to bed.
Apparently Ha Tien is a tourist spot for the Vietnamese. The hotel we stayed in was massive and completely deserted (a bit like a Chinese version of that place in The Shining except without a ballroom to send me mad), but other than that there weren't really any signs of the sort of infrastructure one might expect in a tourist town. There were a few cafes and bars but not that many. Still, it is off season, and maybe more open up when the time is right.
5. Next day, get a bus to the border. Actually we didn't do this. Our ticket was for a bus, but the vehicle we were transported in was in fact a taxi. The lady at the travel desk at the bar told us "get in the taxi it will take you to the bus", then it instead drove us to the border.
6. Get Cambodian visa. This was weird, even by the standards of borders. We left Vietnam no problem, with the man stamping us out fine. Then we filled in the form for a Cambodian visa and a man who wasn't a border guard tried to charge us $25 each (the visa should cost $20). Think he was part of the travel agency we'd booked the bus tickets through. In the end we gave him $20 each plus about $6 in the remaining Vietnamese dong we had. Which he then changed into dollars with a Vietnamese policeman (do the cops double as currency exchangers?). This man then took our passports, photos, money and forms, and we walked to no man's land, where our taxi was waiting for us. Then we drove in the cab across the border (sans our passports) and parked int he baking hot sun on the Cambodian side of the border. Technically I therefore believe we were at this point illegally in Cambodia. We then sat there for about 35 minutes, sweating our proverbials off, and thinking "where is that chap with our passports". Fortunately he did turn up, our passports were returned to us with swank new Cambodian visas in them, and we were on our way. Why we couldn't have just got the passports stamped etc ourselves I don't know, but I suppose when you pay for a bus ticket to Kampot the company wants to do it all for you (at some extra little cost). At no point were our bags checked, incidentally, but I guess there's not much smuggling done by Westerners across this border.
7. Continue with bus journey to Kampot. Again we actually were in the taxi.
All told, the whole journey took something like 32 hours door to door, and was not exactly replete with other tourists. It was easy, though, and we got to see the Mekong delta, which was cool.
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