For our last two days (and a few hours) in Shanghai we had a plan. It wasn't all that complicated really and we wouldn't be rushed too much. That's when plans go awry though.

Our plan for Tuesday was quite simple. Do some walking, visit the Jade Buddha Temple, have some food, do some shopping, check our email and eat more food. So simple that nothing really went wrong. Even the deluge of rain on our walk to the temple couldn't spoil our day. The dark grey skies thought they'd try and catch us out but we had umbrellas to shield us from the downpour long enough to seek shelter by a bank. It was, at best, a half hearted attempt to soak us anyway. Five minutes later the umbrellas were away and we found the temple.

The Jade Buddha temple gets its name, unsurprisingly, from the large jade Buddha statue inside it. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos of it although that's quite understandable really. The rest of the temple buildings were awash with people making little boats out of square pieces of silver coloured paper. Unknown to us, we had chosen a significant day to visit the temple. On the 1st and 15th days of the lunar month temples tend to get quite busy. We wandered around, largely ignored, for a while before slipping out to find the Yu Gardens bazaar.

We had been to the bazaar once before although it was by accident then. This time we went with the intention of doing a little shopping. We spent a long time threading, or rather shoving, our way through packs of other tourists trying to find some of the shops and stalls that we had seen before. It took a while and we were about to give up but then, there it was. Unfortunately our memories had been wrong about what we had seen there and we carried on looking.

We wanted a Mahjong set for ourselves as we had seen lots of people playing it and it looks like fun, if a little complicated. Geared to tourists as it was though, the bazaar was just too expensive really. Most of the sellers tried to lure us in with promises of discounts but we knew what we wanted. The sets we saw were very pretty and great if you never intend to play with them often. We wanted a big, chunky set that you could use a lot. Claire remembered seeing a set in Hong Kong that fit our needs and we decided to wait until then to buy even though the last set we looked at was offered at a 60% discount because we were walking away. We were followed for a little while by the seller dropping her price again and again until she gave up.

We spent a few minutes in a very grubby internet bar that was hidden in a building behind some expensive looking shops. In the corridor leading to there we passed some really odd places. There we small darkened rooms with televisions and sofas where voices called out offering us massages as we passed. There was also an odd looking cabaret bar with some "interesting" sounding music coming from it.

Feeling a bit grubby after our internet experience, we both washed our hands and then went to a familiar building for supper. A few nights before we had eaten in a café on the third floor and this time we opted for the second floor. The food was ok but, at the time of writing this (a few days later), I can't remember what I had so it can't have been outstanding.

So, Tuesday went more or less to plan because it was simple. Wednesday was supposed to be simpler still but somehow managed to be more complicated than we wanted.

Our plan was to pick up our train tickets for the trip to Hong Kong, eat lunch, do some ironing, watch a film and eat supper at Mesa. We stumbled at the first hurdle though. Not wanting to waste a taxi trip out to the hotel where our tickets were supposed to be if they weren't there yet, we asked Anson to call and find out. He told us that they weren't there and that the train wasn't going on Thursday after all. Doh!

The train from Shanghai to Hong Kong leaves at about 1pm on alternate days and takes 24 hours to get there. When we booked the tickets in Beijing we had been told that the train would be going on Wednesday 11th November and that would mean that we would be in Hong Kong about 8 hours before our flight to Delhi left.

We thanked Anson and dug out the card we had for the agent in Beijing and called her. She was relieved to hear from us it seemed. We hadn't left her any contact numbers for our stays in Xi'an or Shanghai as we didn't know at the time where we would be staying and she explained that she'd been trying to track us down when she realised that the train dates had changed. Given that it was already 11am, the chances of us getting on the train within two hours were slim and the alternative was to take the train on the 12th and miss our flight. You know that feeling when you realise that you have a big problem? I call it an "oh-no" moment and we were experiencing one then.

Fortunately the lady we had been dealing with was genuinely helpful and concerned even though it wasn't her fault. She tried getting us on to trains going in the same direction but to slightly different cities however they were fully booked up. For about 30 minutes she tried to get train tickets via "the back door" as she called it but to no avail. She then suggested flying and managed to find us flights to Shenzhen where we could get a bus or a train to Hong Kong easily. The great thing was that it wouldn't cost any more than the train ride and would even get us in to Hong Kong a day early. We went for it and sighed in relief.

Having spent a while on the phone we decided to get all of our phoning sorted in one sitting and started to book some accommodation in Delhi. Since our flight was due to get in at 1.25am we decided to spend our first night in an airport hotel and then move to the city the following morning. I called one of the hotels listed in our Rough Guide and the man on the other end happily accepted the reservation and then proceeded to warn me about something I had read in our guide book the previous night. Taxi and tuk-tuk drivers will frequently tell tourists that the hotel they want is closed or has burned down so that they can take you to one that pays them commission. We were warned, "Don't misguide yourself!", by the man in the hotel with respect to the taxi drivers. I promised him that I wouldn't.

Very hungry by this point, as we had not had any breakfast, we set out to find something yummy. Our guidebook listed one place that did dim sum and we headed for that. Being a Lonely Planet guidebook I should have expected the place to be closed or knocked down but thankfully it wasn't and we had a mini feast of assorted dim sum.

It was 2pm by the time we had eaten and we went then to the hotel where our train tickets should have been to collect our aeroplane tickets instead. We then went back to our room at the hostel and packed for the following morning.

Our final dinner in China / Shanghai was to be at the restaurant Mesa we decided. It may not be Chinese cuisine but the brunch we had the other day suggested that the dinner menu would be good. I chose a delicious sounding roast lamb dish that made my mouth water for twenty minutes until it arrived. I also had some wine for the first time since June! South African Two Oceans Shiraz (2002) if you're interested and it was rather nice. So nice in fact that Claire ordered a glass of her own after trying mine. Just before our desserts arrived, we met one of the restaurant co-owners briefly and chatted to him.

Back at the hostel we watched our second, dubiously acquired DVD; Shrek 2. We saw it in the cinema in New Zealand and we just couldn't resist it now. We didn't get to bed before midnight and we knew we had to be up at 6am but we can sleep when we're dead, as the saying goes.