Bad Karma? Or maybe just bad timing...

So... our last day on our tour in mainland China got off to a rough start in Shanghai. Could have worse, but the lock on our room door jammed, leaving my parents stuck inside, with me (and the room phone) their only links to the outside world for an hour.

This required me to put into practice what my old job called "escalating the issue." Housekeeping, then the front desk, then our tour guide, who then kicked the front desk into shape, who got the handyman, who got my parents out.

Whew.

Where the "bad karma" part comes in is probably at our only touristy stop of the day, at the temple which houses the Jade Buddha in Shanghai. Let me make the following observations about visiting Buddhist temples and monasteries.

1) If you get jostled going into the room with the sacred object in question, exclaiming not quite inaudibly "Jesus!" is probably not the way to go
2) It's not nice to glare at people who are pushing past you - especially if they happent to be wearing a monk's habit
3) You probably don't want to "accidentally" step on anybody's foot on the way out. Hard. Um, oops.

Don't worry. I got paid back. Or maybe it was the vibe my parents were giving off. Our bus broke down between the airport and our hotel, blocking one of the main (and cheapest and therefore most frequently used) tunnels between Hong Kong and somewhere else in Hong Kong for at least fifteen minutes. There's two lanes, but the police had to block them both to let us off the bus and onto the next one.

Back to China tomorrow - in and around Guangdong to visit Dad's relatives.

And I need to find an Internet cafe on the street. The hotel is frickin' expensive.