For our last evening we had a little stroll around the village and Jayne bought some knick knackeries for the folks back home. As the local scran hadn't come up to scratch we decided on some Chinese food. We ended up in an authentic restaurant called Hong Kong 97, strange name but there you go. The food was very good, probably too good as it wasn't of the Egg Foo Yung variety you get back in Blighty, this stuff was proper Cantonese/Hong Kong cuisine and we would recommend this place. Only downside was that we ordered Szechuan Prawns, we'd had a hankering for these all through the holiday. We sat there as the sizzling tray came towards us and it smelt and looked really good, only to pass us and be placed onto someone else's table. They looked delighted. Ours never showed up as the tray that passed us was probably ours. We gave up in the end although the lady who served us did realise the error but we didn't want to wait any longer. Oh well. We did speak to Mr. Wong the owner on the way out, in true form he was clutching the Racing Post. My pidgin Cantonese broke the ice and we had a chat about Hong Kong. He had lived in Tenerife for the last 40 years and said it was pretty tough. Personally I think his food is too good and he may need to go down the route of the silver foil tray if he wants to get in the British tourist hordes.

We decided on an early night as we would have to get up early to get our bus to the airport as we didn't want to miss that flight ! The bus would pick us up at 6.59am outside the apartment entrance. I set the alarm on my phone for 5.30am as time would be of the essence. We didn't get much sleep as we were a bit nervous about missing our bus. That said, the phone alarm went off and we were bang on schedule, a bit of last minute packing, a shower & we were ready to move. It was 6.40am and all we had to do was lug the bags up the two flights of stairs, drop off the key to reception and walk the short distance to the allotted pick up point. I grabbed the bags and told Jayne I'd take them up while she would ring for the receptionist to drop off the key. What could go wrong?

The security at the apartments was pretty good they had two gates and a fairly high fence. I got to the gates and guess what, they were locked. There was no electric press switch to open the gates, only the lock. Jayne came up and I asked had she given the key to reception? Jayne had rung the bell but this being Manyana Ville, the person who was meant to be on reception had found a bed and simply rolled over. Jayne had then put the key into the post box. A slight problem, we were locked in and time was now becoming tight.

And cue Panic Mode - The fence was too high to climb but further on down there was a wall which looked scalable. We managed to get Jayne onto the wall but there was a 15 foot drop on one side and an 8 foot drop onto the pavement the other side. Once up, Jayne was stuck...on all fours. A brief risk assessment took place and the conclusion was that this really wasn't a great idea. Plus Jayne was shouting "I'm not going over this wall !". We managed to get Jayne down and I said I'd go over and run down to the bus stop and get the bus to wait. It was an excellent panic. I told Jayne to go back and keep ringing the bell for reception, but we were running out of time. I slung the bags over, climbed the wall and jumped over to freedom. Jayne decided then that she would just ring someone's apartment and ask them for the key to the gate. She said she'd give them some money for waking them up. There was no need to ring the bell really but she did and hadn't noticed Mrs. Lady in her cotton nightie on the balcony above, offering her key, who no doubt had been woken by our wailings. Whilst Jayne was getting out of the tourist Gulag, I legged it down to the bus stop, surely we'd made it. Jayne joined me and I checked the phone for the time. It was 6.59am exactly. Then we waited.....and waited. I said give it til 7.10am....but still no bus. We looked at the bus ticket and it stated that we needed to be at the bus stop 10 minutes before departure, maybe we'd missed it. There was a number to call so I did. The number went through to our friends on Reception at the apartment, first it went through to voice mail but then said in English to hold. Eventually the sleepy chap on reception answered. I was glad I'd woken him up. I then told him that we were waiting for the bus and it hadn't shown up. It was now 7.15am. Manuel then asked me what time the bus was due to pick us up.. "6.59 am" I shouted. Silence, then he said "Keep waiting, you're early". I said "No, it's 7.15". "No it's not" said Manuel "It's 6.15".

Oh. Now, I'd done my homework on this and I knew that Tenerife is on British time, but my phone didnt and had automatically gone an hour forward when we flew over Spain. Like I said I didnt even see a clock that worked properly earlier in the week, so how would I have known? We now had the luxury of sitting on the pavment for the next 45 minutes. A sense of humour is essential at times like these and I'm really glad that Jayne has one. It could only have happened to us.