Today we plan to enter Syria, but without visas we know that there is a chance we will not be allowed to enter. If this happens, we will go to Gaziantep because there is a Syrian consulate there that might give us a visa, but right now we think our best bet is to go to the border as some people have been successful this way.
Before we leave, we visit the Hatay Archeological Museum. There is a lovely white marble sarcophagus here, and the preserved/restored bones of a man, a woman and a young girl. The museum has a huge collection of beautiful mosaics, some are so finely crafted they actually look like paintings from a distance.
So now we want to go to Syria. We get our bags from the hotel, and sweat our way to the dolmus stand to Reyhanli, a Turkish border town that doesn't have much to captivate a traveller. From there, we pay a dolmus driver 20 Lira to drop us off at the Turkish border. Now we get an offer from a taxi driver to take us to Aleppo for $100, but this seems steep to us. We think there must be a bus, or dolmus or at least a cheaper taxi at the Syrian border so we decide to walk. As the Turkish border guard stamps our passports he tells us it is 5km to the Syrian border crossing, but now it is too late to go back as he has already stamped us. So on we go in the baking sun.
At least our water bottles are full, we start walking. At about the halfway point a truck driver feels sorry for us and takes us the rest of the way to the Syrian border where we jump out. A guard directs us to an administration building a few hundred meters away. The heat is stifling.
When we enter we are relieved to be out of the sun, and we mentally prepare ourselves with our plan to get visas. The official rule is that if Syria has an embassy in your country, you're supposed to get your visa there - since Canada does have a Syrian embassy in Ottawa we're prepared for this eventuality. We plan to explain that Ottawa is very far from Vancouver, and we also have a letter from Leah's Syrian friend inviting us to Syria and a photocopy of his passport; but we will only use these tactics as a last resort - our primary plan is to just ask and be polite and hope they don't notice we're Canadian.
We're not looking forward to walking back to Turkey if we're knocked back from Syria. At the counter we are directed to a side office but when we arrive there is a big scene, and two men are led out in handcuffs. We hope we don't share their fate. After sitting in the room for a few minutes they shuffle us out into the foyer again and we're told 'six'! We don't know what this means, six minutes, six hours? Six o'clock, or are we 6th in line? We do as we're told and we sit down on a bench to wait.
After an hour and a half, six o'clock is approaching. Many men have come and left, some shouting, some pacing and many plain-clothes men going in and out of the offices. I talked to a Turkish man who was also awaiting a Syrian visa, and he assures me that soon it will be time; but he has no room in his truck for us to get to Aleppo.
Finally around 6.30pm the Turk and I enter the office again and we make our applications. I hand over our passports, and give the names of our parents, then we're instructed to pay so we run down the hallway to pay our $56 each and we run back to the visa counter with the receipt to get our stamps. We're questioned in more detail about our jobs, and where we are staying in Aleppo. We say we're staying with our friend Farhad, and the customs agent has the same last name! He thought that was very funny, and when customs people are happy I'm happy.
With visas in hand we can now give some more thought to how to get 100km to Aleppo. As we approach the baggage inspection area a stone-faced Syrian man holds up his hand and says (shouts) 'Open ze bags!'. So we put our bags down on the stone bench and open then, and almost immediately we hear 'Close ze bags!'.
Here is a video of the border guards!
And so begins the next two hours, quite possibly the most fun I've ever had at a border crossing. Our predicament is that there aren't any major towns between the border and Aleppo (a city of 7 million) and this is 100km away. There is only one bus a day that runs in the morning. We're still hopeful (hope is all we have at this point) that we can catch a ride with someone or a taxi somehow, so instead of rushing things we just sit down and have tea, coffee and laughs with the border guards. They give us our first few Arabic words, and around 9pm they find someone who is driving to Aleppo for us.
Some memorable moments are the moustacioed Abu Faris, his facial hair the butt of some gentle ribbing. We talk about Canada and try to describe how huge it is - this is probably difficult for Syrians to imagine as they can drive across their country in 5 or 6 hours.
Almost hilariously to us, the driver picks us up and then stops about 100m past the border, gets out and leaves us there for about ten minutes only to return with two more people for Aleppo. Finally in Aleppo we meet Leila, and she takes us for dinner and to our hotel.
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