Phnom Penh to HCMC

2 days ago: In the morning we went back to the Russian market for some last minute shopping in Cambodia.
But actually after browsing around we ended up just buying some cards...
Then we head to the bus station for our bus back to Ho Chi Minh City. To our surprise the bus did depart on time!
The busride was supposed to take 6 hours. We expected to arrive at the Cambodian border after about 4 hours but after 4 hours there still was no border in sight...2 more hours passed and still didn't arrive at the border. At that point it had gotten dark already and we started wondering whether we were on one of the "famous" scam buses. (which would drive very slowly or wrong direction, arrive at the border by the time the border is closed already and then you are forced to stay at the extremely overpriced hotel they drop you off at). So at that point I did go to the person from the bus company in the front to check the situation. He told me the bus ride was delayed because we stopped for a very long time at the Mekong river.... In fact we only stopped for about 5 minutes during the whole trip until that point.... So I did question him asking what do you mean? We only stopped for a few minutes. But he kept insisting we had stopped for a very long time, all others surrounding me laughed at me like how could I have missed the very long stop... Anyway according to him we would be arriving the border after another 40 minutes more... (really amazing as at that time we should have already been in HCMC; the exact same busride opposite direction did really only take 6 hours). So starting to be suspecting we would really end up in a scam, was pretty relieved that we finally saw a point of recognition which was not too far off from the customs. We did (like on the way there) have a quick break at a restaurant and then passed the customs. At that time it was around 20.00, fortunately the customs were still open!

From there on still took us a while, an hour to cross the customs and another 2 hours bus ride in Vietnam. The bus ride which was supposed to take 6 hours finally ended after 10 hours! Still puzzled about what had caused the delay of 4 hours....But anyway really relieved we didn't have to stay in a "scam" hotel and we did get our passports back without any hassle as well :).