Today was going to be a very busy day, it was the day we would cross into the Islamic world and enter Turkey. Even though Turkey is a wannabe-secular country, the bottom line is that it is an Islamic country full of lots of very nice Muslims and Masjids. My views of Turkey are that it is suffering from an identity crisis, on the one hand it has rich and strong Islamic heritage, but on the other hand it is desperate to become western and be accepted into the European Union. Sadly the EU is not as willing to accept Turkey, I will be honest, even today most of Europe sadly look down upon Turkish people and Turkey. This is clearly a one-way love relationship, my advice to Turkey would be to turn east, and go towards Islam and once again become an Islamic super power, rebuild the Khilafah, Islamic State.

I had never been to Turkey before but studied about it in History and the great Ottoman Empire, in the west they refer to it as the Ottoman period, but after further 'real' studying I came to learn that this was actually the Khilafah, I giant Islamic super state. Having studied History, I must say that one should never just trust the text books; there are always two sides to an event.

So we woke up very early and drove to the border, it was funny as we crossed over the bridge, the Greek side had it painted Blue and White similar to the national flag, and the Turkish side had it painted Red and White, similar to their flag. The soldiers looked very pleasant, but there was an underlying sense of tensions, between these two historical former super powers. The border was pure chaos, the organisers as usual didn't know where to go, and it was pure hassle.

First we had to go and get a visa, this meant queuing up, and some idiots (northerners) decided to jump the queue, and as you can imagine it resulted in a punch-up between two idiots. As one very nice northern brother put it, fitna ....jumping the que and having a bad attitude will cause fitna ....and he was right. In fact one elderly bearded guy (northerner from Bradford) pushed in front of me, and when I confronted him he refused to acknowledge what I said. Then after the punch-up he said it was too dangerous at the back of the queue as there was a punch-up, but when that idiot realised the punch-up was because of idiots like him pushing in, he soon went to the back.

I shouldn't use the word idiot so much, but it so sad when people, especially with beards and of advanced age, have such a disregard for morals and manners. After collecting our visas at a cost of 10 Euros, we had to go to booth 1 with our Customs Manifest, they kept one copy and stamped another, then we had to take the stamped one to booth 3 where it would be signed off, then we could go queue up at the barrier.

As you can imagine a lot of 'idiots' turned up without bringing customs manifests, let alone 10 copies to be on the safe side. Even though we were in the middle of the line, because our paperwork was in order we ended up being at the front. On the other side were many Turkish people, and they had been waiting for a long time, personally I felt bad that rather than go across we were forced to wait for the idiots to sort out their paper work. Then the Turkish authorities and Turkish brother in our convoy who drove the big truck, asked us to just go through ....on hearing that the organisers ran up and sad don't go through, you're not allowed ....blah blah ....basically they wanted to go first for the cameras, anyway as usual you have to disregard the idiot organisers, because it is nonsense, so I went through, I can happily say I was first into Turkey ....what an honour, the reception was amazing and it was the first time we encountered IHH our Turkish partners.

After that we waited for everybody to sort their paperwork out and then drove to Istanbul, as usual it was cause, we weren't told exactly where to go, plus there were no planned fuel stops. So we went solo, and enjoyed the scenery, it was so nice seeing villages with huge Mosques, it was strange but nice. Turkey is a bit less advanced in terms of infrastructure, you notice the potholes as soon as you cross over, but they are making a big effort to spruce it up.

The weather was wet and driving conditions were tough as usual, I was surprised at the vast amounts of open space, it seemed like a very nice chilled out country.

Despite some confusion when we came off the motorway, we caught up with a group led by IHH and they guided us to our evening stop. The first stop was a convention centre where we had dinner and a lovely talk by some Jewish Brothers; they were very nice and clearly supported Gaza and the Palestinian cause. They were very sad that israel has hijacked the Jewish faith for their own political and greedy self interests.

Then it was off to our night stop, which was a sports hall, basketball court. It was very nice although the big picture of Kamal Atturk made the place look tacky. People have mixed views about him, on the one hand he did modernize Turkey and has advanced it, but sadly on the other hand he took Turkey too far away from Islam. Having his photos up everywhere and statutes of him is not a good thing, he will only be punished for it, so best in my opinion to take them down and instead carry his work of modernisation forward, but also stick very close to Islam.

GOOD NIGHT was in the van, parked outside the basketball centre. It was another very cold night

TOP TIP - When going abroad make sure to have photocopies of all your vital documents, even passports and spread them out, so if one person loses a bag, at least somebody else will have copies, which makes it easier to get new documents.

Also remember driving through the European Union is easy, no borders, in fact sometimes you don't even realise you have driven into another country, you only realise when the local mobile phone company sends you a Welcome text, they Welcome you to get ripped off.

Also be warned that outside Europe you are looking at a minimum of £1 per minute to receive a call, so be careful.