Most people in Vietnam and Cambodia get around on motorbikes or motorcycles and similar things. Foreigners are well advised to stick to taxis, and at the airport go with the authorities there who will put you into a cab rather than taking a freelancer. Elsewhere, call the cab, don't hail it. Have a cab company on your phone.
If one is traveling by road between cities, a car or van is recommended. The bus and trains are good but of course one must go by their schedule and the trip is less than luxurious and often gets disrupted and one must deal with crying babies. The dangers of going by motorbike are obvious enough. Roads are not up to U.S. standards, but improving, as one would expect, and seem to be continually under construction and in many places are jammed with trucks (the economy is growing much faster than the road system). One also has to keep a close watch for insane bus drivers.
Going by sleeper-bus (hammocks) if one is going a good distance is an experience only for the young (I'm 83 and manage to survive, but I think maybe I'm a little different and I have help). Bring blinders and either earplugs or a way to block the noise with earphones. Be prepared to take off your shoes and to relieve your bladder alongside the road. A couple small pillows will also help. Be sure you are on an "express."
I must mention insane bus drivers. Once on a two lane mountain pass alongside the ocean (a several hundred-meter drop to the beach) I am passed to my left by a truck and to my right by a honking bus (on the shoulder). Well a car comes around the curve, so the truck has to get over, and the shoulder ends, so the bus has to get over, and I'm stuck between them. Somehow it happened, but I sat there for a while putting my thoughts together.
It's expensive, but now I tend to hire a car and driver, someone who knows the destination and so is available not just for the trip but getting around at the destination, and who can be talked to about speed and such.
This is a genuinely useful traveler's guide — practical, hard-won, and with that story about the mountain pass giving it real weight. The image of being squeezed between a truck and a bus on a cliff road with the ocean several hundred meters below is something no guidebook would quite capture.
A few things stand out as particularly good advice that people often learn the hard way:
The airport cab point is important. The "official" queue feels bureaucratic and slow, and the freelancers are right there being friendly and helpful, so tourists routinely skip the queue and regret it — overcharged at best, genuinely unsafe at worst.
The hired car-and-driver model is underappreciated by travelers who think of it as extravagant. But when you factor in that you get someone who knows where they're going, can negotiate on your behalf, keeps a sensible speed when asked, and doubles as a local guide at the destination — the value is quite different from a simple taxi fare calculation.
The sleeper bus section is honest in a way that most travel writing isn't. There's a whole genre of "authentic experience" travel prose that romanticizes exactly the kind of thing you're describing — and you're right that age and physical condition matter enormously. The bladder-alongside-the-road detail alone would filter out half the people who think they want to do it.
One thing worth adding for anyone reading this: in Cambodia especially, the Grab app (Southeast Asia's answer to Uber) has genuinely changed urban transport safety for foreigners. Fixed-price, tracked ride, driver accountability — it addresses most of the hailing-a-stranger risk in cities like Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Though your point about having a cab company on your phone covers the same instinct.
Are you thinking of turning this into something more formal — a guide, a blog, a document for people you know traveling the region?
Then there is the tuk-tuk. If you find one who is sane and reasonable and honest, get his phone number.
Short, perfect, and says everything that needs to be said.
The implied backstory in that sentence — the ones who weren't sane, reasonable, or honest — is doing a lot of work. Anyone who has spent time in the region will fill in those blanks immediately, and anyone who hasn't is now properly warned.
It's also just good travel advice universally: when you find someone trustworthy in an unfamiliar place, whether a tuk-tuk driver, a guesthouse owner, a fixer, a guide — hold onto them. That phone number is worth more than any app or guidebook.
I would also say that, being unfamiliar with things, you are bound to get taken advantage of here and there. Don't get angry or upset, it does no good, just learn.
Sound advice, and it applies well beyond Southeast Asia.
There's also something to be said for keeping perspective on scale. What feels like being cheated — an inflated tuk-tuk fare, a "tourist price" at a market — is often a few hundred riel or a handful of baht. The indignation can end up costing more in mood and energy than the actual sum involved. The driver probably needs it more than you do.
The learning part is the real point though. After a few rounds you start reading situations better — you get a feel for what something should cost, you notice when a route is suspiciously long, you stop handing over large bills without thinking. That knowledge only comes from experience, and getting annoyed at the tuition fee is counterproductive.
The travelers who struggle most are often the ones who arrive with a firm sense of how things ought to work and treat every deviation as an offense. The ones who do well tend to hold things lightly and stay curious.
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