The soft seat waiting room in the main train station (enter from the forecourt, near the eastern end; there's an English sign) has an office that sells same-day and next-day tickets only, hard seat and sleeper as well as soft (daily 7am-9pm). Alternatively, the Longmen Hotel, a couple of minutes west of the station square, has a foreigners' ticket office (daily 7am-5.30pm & 6-9pm) in the lobby which sells tickets for up to four days in advance - mainly seats to Nanjing and Hangzhou, though it does also sell sleepers to a few important destinations such as Beijing or Guangzhou. To book further in advance (up to a week) you can buy tickets (with a 10-15 percent mark-up) from CTS in the Pacific Hotel on Nanjing Xi Lu, from the CITS office in the Shanghai Centre, or from the CITS office at 2 Jinling Dong Lu (all daily 8.30-11.30am & 1-4.45pm).

Tourists rarely travel by bus into or out of Shanghai, though for a few destinations buses might offer a convenient way to leave the city, because they are slightly cheaper than trains and it is easy to get a seat. In the western part of the train station square several private operators offer tickets, up to a day in advance, for destinations in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, but their prices are nearly as expensive as the train's. A kiosk between the Shanghai Museum and the Yan'an Lu elevated expressway sells tickets for buses leaving from the train station up to a week in advance. The Qiujiang Lu bus station, just west of Henan Bei Lu, has more reasonable prices, yet less comfortable buses, mainly leaving for Hangzhou and towns in Jiangsu. For a few destinations outside the city, but inside the Shanghai Municipality, services leave from the Xiqu bus station (bus #113 from the train station) or a nameless bus stop on Shaanxi Nan Lu, outside the Wenhua Guangchang, just south of Fuxing Lu. For these buses, you pay on board.

Leaving by boat also deserves serious consideration, with tickets cheaper and travelling conditions sometimes better than the trains. You can buy tickets from any travel service for an added fee, or go to the boat ticket office (daily 7-11.30am & 12-5pm) at the southwest corner of Jinling Dong Lu and the Bund, which sells every kind of boat ticket out of Shanghai. The office has no English sign, but the entrance is directly across the Bund from the riverside pyramid-shaped Diamond Restaurant. The downstairs windows sell tickets for the coastal routes. Foreigner surcharges have been abolished, and therefore prices are fairly low. Sample first- to fifth-class fares include Dalian ¥120-387, Qingdao ¥138-345, Ningbo ¥46-170, Putuo Shan ¥68-200, Wenzhou ¥90-265 and Mawei (for Fuzhou) ¥104-317. First class generally means a double room with nice mattresses and a washbasin, while fifth class patrons can expect 32-berth compartments, lights on all night and noisy surroundings. For Putuo Shan there is also a special ticket window belonging to a private operator. Yangzi River boat tickets are sold upstairs, now with no foreigner surcharge (ticket window open Mon-Fri 8.30-11.15am & 1-4pm). Sample fares include: Nanjing ¥16-128, Wuhan ¥66-112 and Chongqing ¥137-2400.

Finally, if you go right through the upstairs hall and follow the corridor around to the right, there are two offices on the left (Mon-Sat 8.30am-noon & 1-4pm) selling tickets to Japan and Korea . (The long-running Hong Kong service has been discontinued with the construction of the Shanghai-Kowloon direct rail service.) For Japan there are connections to Osaka and Kobe. At the time of writing, each boat had berths ranging from ¥1300 to ¥6500. The frequency of each boat varies according to season, but generally there are once-weekly departures in winter and twice-weekly in summer. The voyage takes about two days. To South Korea, there is a boat to Inch'on, Seoul's port, once a week in winter and twice a week in summer. The journey takes around 38 hours, and prices range from ¥600 to ¥1600. Onboard all boats, the conditions are pretty luxurious, with steam baths, restaurants, discos and clean, comfortable berths.