We weren't sure what to expect from our first land border crossing of the trip, from Vietnam into Cambodia. Having read all sorts of horror stories about crooked officials demanding bribes in exchange for Cambodian visas, we were fully prepared for a difficult entry, even purchasing e-visas in advance, just in case.

In fact, the most problematic part of the border crossing was actually exiting Vietnam, largely as a result of their novel approach to getting people out of the country. We took a bus from Ho Chi Minh direct to Phnom Penh, and shortly after leaving the bus conductor collected in all of our passports. When we arrived at the border, he then threw the 30-odd passports on the desk of the border control guard. The rest of the passengers (all Vietnamese) proceeded to huddle around the guard's desk, waiting expectantly for their passports to be processed. As a result, anyone wanting to get through had to push through a gaggle of men in their 30s and 40s acting more like 15 year old boys on a school trip than businessmen and holiday-makers.

The border guard seemed to take a perverse pleasure in taking as long as possible to stamp our passports, letting through many other people in small groups every time he'd processed one or two belonging to our group – there was no concept of a queue here, it was every man for himself.

Why we couldn't have just queued up and gone through one by one, passports in hand, like you do in any other country in the world, is beyond us. Instead, each time a person's name was called by the bus conductor, it was repeated by the excitable gaggle stationed in front of the desk. That person then had to push through, rugby-scrum style, in order to collect his passport and get back on the bus.

Our passports, being foreign and therefore the most complicated, were processed last, and although the guy did take a long hard look at my passport photo (I do in fact look like a Russian spy in my picture, so this is hardly surprising), we were at last allowed to leave the country.

So then it was back on the bus, where we drove 500 metres down the road.....only to arrive at the Cambodian border entrance, where we had to get back off the bus to do it all again. This was easy in comparison – we kept our passports throughout, and the e-visa worked like a charm. We even made it back onto the bus before most of our fellow travellers, ready for the onward journey.