How would you behave in this situation?

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You are friends with a couple who live in a foreign country. You go to visit them sometimes and sometimes they come to visit you.

One day you're sent to that country by your work, for 4 days at a conference. You're counting on having at least a couple hours for shopping and dining outside the conference hotel, but you know there's no way you will have the time to both do that and visit the friends. So you:

1. Email your friends telling them the above, and apologizing that you won't have time to see them this time around. Then when you're in their country, get out of one of the lectures for a few minutes to have a chat on the phone with them.

2. Never tell your friends that you were in their country. They'd be very offended you didn't take the time to visit and that you preferred to shop and dine in your little free time. It'd only spoil or end a good friendship.

3. Decline the trip, which was optional anyway. You don't want to spoil a good friendship and you're a bad liar, and you certainly wouldn't want to visit them instead of shopping and dining.

4. You sadly give up on the shopping and dining and spend all your free time with your friends, just to secure the friendship.

I wouldn't even tell them I was ever there, unless they asked.

We're not international but sometimes my mom goes back to California to see certain people and can't fit everyone into the trip. With friends she might tell them but with certain family members she won't. They might find ways to intrude on her trip, or force her to change plans or just guilt her and ruin the trip.
So, I vote for #1 but if any of those friends are really, really sensitive and wouldn't understand your schedule then maybe it's best not to tell them. A couple of hours out of 4 days is nothing and it's not lying to say that you're too busy to visit.

I also wouldn't tell them that I had just visited their country. Generally even in those very rare situations I paid a visit in somebody's home I was always unsure for how long I should be there so those visits vere always short.

I'd choose no. 1. My family think I'm mean for it. They believe no. 2 is the right thing to do.

I would choose #4, and I would see if they'd accompany me to dining, and shopping. TBH, that's what I've always done with family, and friends when visiting anyways. You have to eat while visiting them, and usually you want to buy souvenirs of your trip, so everyone goes out together. Is this unusual?

I'd choose number 1.

1, without the email. Tell them before, they become obligated to offer, plan, and you get tired climbing the WP stairs.

Go, do, you need time alone, and when it is too late to do anything else, the night before you leave in the morning, call them, after you eat, shower, nap, and give them your regrets for you would like to see them.

A minor divirsionary attack on the airport, your flight will be cancelled, and you can spend the day with them. If they really want to see you there are always ways.

A four day trip would cause me to need extra sleep. I am sexually excited by strange beds, hotels, I was not a business traveler. It takes a few days till my mind catches up. Oh, just for sleeping.

Air travel tires me, the strip searches, the interrogations, I do look like I am up to something. I always plan for extra rest.

For your own peace of mind, you will not run across anyone you know. It is not like going out for groceries, where neighbors you aviod can start talking in public. It is a little freedom, a place where yes, I am strange, a foreigner. You need that.

The girl thing, I wanted to see you but there was someone at the conferance, and I thought maybe. It did not happen, but a girl's got to try. Everyone understands.

4 is the right thing to do IMO. If you don't tell them you'll be there, they'll find out later, unless you're really great at keeping secrets for the rest of your life. If you do tell them you're there, they'll be offended if you don't meet them. And 3 is totally caving to your social anxiety and letting it take opportunities away from you.

5. Invite them to join you for shopping and dining. That way you get to do it all. If they can't fit in with your schedule they may decline (then you get to be alone, yay!) but at least you asked them.

I chose choice 1, but I cant see why I can't invite them to the things I wanted to do.

#1, without skipping a lecture of course. Call them on the way to something, or right before you go to bed.

I would go #4. I only shop for groceries, and at Best Buy and online these days (except for when my clothes wear out, in which case i hit a Target, or a Men's best Warehouse if i need a suit.) I don't need to shop at stores in a foreign country (where I would be lost and confused even more than i normally am if left to my own devices with no plans), and the only two things I would want to do are the conference you mention and visiting my "friends" (although I only have 3 friends and all are in the same country as me; I'm just postulationg hypothetically.)

I'd choose one. Anyone who I'd be friends with would not be the type to be offended if I explained politely that I was doing my own thing and wouldn't have time to see them.

Why can't you have your friends meet you and shop and dine together?

Ultimately you have to decide what you want to do, do that, and take care of the details in the way you feel is best.

3 or 4 depending on the circumstances - with a bit of 1 in that of contacting them and seeing how to sort things out and if there aren't any other possibilities.
. . . something like that has happened with some relatives abroad; they adjusted their schedules to meet and have lunch somewhere. It's not such a big deal IMO.

Edit: I think I misunderstood 3; I would never cancel the entire trip abroad.