I had two pretty interesting border crossing trips which I think you might find entertaining.

The first took place on a regular Wednesday night on what should have been a standard night bus direct to Antakya, the closest Turkish border town with Syria. but due to my lack of planning, that bus was fully booked when I arrived so I had to wait till the next evening, since there is only one bus a day from Goreme to Anktakya. So the trip began as I, along with two Japanese guys I met in Goreme also going to Aleppo, took my first bus for Karatoy Thursday evening where I had a 4 hour layover till my midnight bus left for Antakya. Of course, there was no one serving food anywhere, so my dinner consisted of some doritos, cookies, and part of a blueberry pound cake thingy. Naturally our bus left an hour late and arrived in Antakya 1.5 hours late as well. I was meant to catch a 7:30am bus to Aleppo, which I assumed I had missed by arriving at 8:30am. But alas, the bus actually waited for us since it only had 6 or 7 other passengers and buses in these parts, on schedule or not, don't go anywhere unless they are reasonably full. The ticket process for this next bus was confusing, and executed in the bus parking lot, as was my changing of some Turkish lira (worthless outside of Turkey) to Syrian Pounds (Turkish money is like the US Dollar compared to this rubbish) with a questionable fello as I rushed onto the bus. Finally, after getting all the other paper work sorted out in a matter of about 3.6 seconds, we were off to Syria.
It was only about 30 minutes to the border where we came upon a huge line of trucks waiting to get through customs, fortunately being on a bus we got to skip this line and get right to the Turkish border control station. The bus attendant (all buses in the middle east have a guy that just helps out including serving water or towels, answering questions etc, in this case collecting our passports and dealing with border police) went into the office, got our passports stamped in a matter of 15 minutes or so, and we were good to go to Syria, amazingly smooth and easy, considering my border crossing from Bulgaria into Turkey consisted of everyone on the bus getting off, having there bag searched, and took 2+ hours. Once crossing the barriers and barbered wire fences with armed guards seen at every border we were ready to deal with the Syrian side of the border control. This was hands down my most nervous border crossing point I had gone through yet. I had no issue getting my Syrian visa in Istanbul (for a whopping $115USD) but was still anxious about being an American and entering Syria.
We all got off the bus leaving our baggage in the bus undercarraige, followed the bus attendant to the border patrol office and patiently waited (think DMV.) This process at the window of the border patrol was not unlike any other "line" in this part of the world, where nobody queues up in order, rather a bunch of people charge the window throwing bows trying to be first, fortunately our bus attendant got our passports to the correct man efficiently enough and it was just a matter of meeting his approval............One by one he entered them into the system, stamped them, and handed them back to our attendant as we watched anticipating who might be questioned first. Alas, mine was last and the bus attendant called me up, but to my amazement he simply handed me my passport and directioned me to get back on the bus. No issues, no worries, I was ready to travel around Syria.
Being last the nearly full bus was patiently waiting my return and upon my jumping on the bus took off for Aleppo. Of course, there is no head count or confirmation that everyone is on board, just a quick glance and go. Fortunately, one of the Japanese guys with me was looking out for his friend who still remained behind in the toilet. He ran up front to stop the bus, then got off to go chase him down. The bus drived wanted nothing to do with a further delay of our journey (we were a good 3 hours late by now) and wanted the Japanese guy to get his and his friends bags, and get off the bus, rather then wait a few more minutes to track him down. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed, he was allowed to collect his friend, and we started the last hour of our trip to Aleppo, but it just wasn't meant to go smoothly.
Not more then 10 minutes later, the frustrated bus driver feverously chain smoking cigarettes on our non smoking bus was faced with his biggest dilemmna of the day. Coming the opposite way down the road from us was a standard donkey with master and cart full of goods being toted behind. But this donkey decided he had enough of his job for the day, and took a rash turn to his left, dislodging from the cart and putting himself directly in the busses path. As you could probably guess, our driver didn't exactly react as proficiently as you would like, slamming the breaks but not quite soon enough to avoid drilling the donkey. For all you animal lovers our there, the donkey didn't even get knocked down, he was definitely disoriented for a while, but amazingly in good shape from being hit by a 20 ton bus. The bus driver didn't make out quite as well, as he was knocked out cold for a good few minutes from a rough head slamming into the steering wheel (remember to buckle up children.) As a few of the Syrian/Turkish passengers attempted to bring him back with splashes of water and slaps to the face, the rest of us looked on wondering "what the #$%* just happened?" Soon enough our bus driver was back in action, and the back up bus driver took us to the nearest rest station to get everthing sorted out and put the game plan together to get us to Aleppo. After an enjoyable 45 minute stop, in which we staired at the desert and also saw a moterbike pull up to refuel carrying 6 kids, the oldest at about 14 driving, we were ready to go. The bus driver was layed out in the back of the bus, the broken head light was removed and a temporary fix was put on, and our back up driver took us the rest of the way to Aleppo, with no further delay............."Hello my friend, welcome to Aleppo, your first time to Syria? Wonderful, you need taxi?, where you need go?"...........