Urfa is a city completely different from anything Ive experianced before. It really does feel a lot more like the middle east. No High rise buildings, no tourist rubbish. Just the real country, a really refreshing change. The tour leader is also a lot, lot better than the last and seems to be genuinely interested in the people in the tour group. He's made so much more effort than the last guy to explain to us the culture and the history of the city. One of the main things is that he goes out for meals and drinks with us in the evening. A really nice refresing change, the next week I think will go very quickly.

The border crossing was a little long. We arrived at around midday after a 3 hour bus jouney to the border. This border we walked across. It was just over 1km in total, through about 3 checkpoints. Walking through a single track road with minefields on either side didnt exactly give the greatest of confidences. Anyway we plodded on and found ourselves at the final visa stop. We (me and 3 others) we invited into what seemed to be a senior officials office, had a quick look around the room and saw a bed in one corner and thought the worst...
Although the whole process took quite a while, the people we spoke to were very friendly and did what they could to make us comfortable. Brought us tea and inviting us to sit down. the interrogation didnt last too long, it was more the waiting around. They just quizzed us on where we were going, what we were doing why we were doing it and what our jobs were.

We were due to meet the tour leader directly on the other side. However upon arriving there was no-one to be seen. Feeling a little un easy being alone at the syrian side of the border we began to walk to what looked like a cafe a km or so up the road. 30 minutes later the guide arrived to our relief. It turns out that he and the rest of our group (who we were yet to meet) had driven up from damascus that morning and had just arrived.

At the end of Turkey we lost some of our group and in Syria we joined up with another 5 people. 3 americans and 2 aussies. Two of the americans immediately made them selves unliked by both us and the syrians. Apparently the first thing they said to the leader was 'how do you feel knowing that your country directly supports and funds terrorists and wmd's?' Possibly the last thing to say here. If give them 2 days. Fortunately they are the minority of americans which ive not met many of. The other American and 2 aussies are very friendly.