After reaching Sihanoukville, I headed to the hostel and had a few beers and chatted with the staff there to pass time while I waited for the bus.
This left at 7.15pm, and thanks to the help of the beers, I was able to sleep/doze for most of the first part of this trip, despite the standard Asian driving tactics of going too fast round all the corners!
I woke at around midnight as the bus was pulling away from a stop close to Phnom Penh, and 30 minutes later we were at the capital city, where we had to disembark and transfer to another bus.
We made good time towards the border, and arrived at the Cambodia side for around 4.30am.
At this point, we all waited for 5.45am when we were able to go through the migration process of stamping out of the country.
One Canadian girl on the bus had not pre-arranged a visa for Vietnam, and was forced in to a situation where she had to pay for a fast track visa service from the buss operator. I am not sure whether it had been a full requirement, but I did know that all the advice I had found indicated you at least needed a visa on arrival letter that could be stamped.
We headed off to the second half of the border crossing at 6.56am, after everyone had been processed out of Cambodia, and then left our passports with the driver for a mass processing at the Vietnam entry point at 7.30am, before leaving for the last leg of the journey to HCMC at 8.50am.
On the way, we passed a spot where there was a ttre repair service, with one bus there being serviced.