City in the Mountains

Had quite a late start today as one of our group was sick all night and had a medical check in the morning.  We then went for a ride on the MagnaLev train to the airport.  The train runs on magnetic "rails" and takes 7 minutes to get from the city to the airport, a trip which takes an hour by bus.  At it's fastest, the train reaches 431km/hr.  When the other train passed, you couldn't see it, you just felt a quick vibration as it went by.  Unfortunately we had to leave our local guide, Zelda, here - she was great fun and we'd really enjoyed her company.  We flew to Guilin, which took about 2 hours, and our national escort Jason had bought us bananas incase we didn't like the airline food (which was actually quite good).  Our coach driver in Guilin is a lady, which is a bit unusual here.  The city is much smaller than Shanhai, about 800,000 people, and is surrounded by karst mountains so very picturesque.  The only down side is the humidity, but you can live with that.  There was a wedding banquet in our hotel tonight, so lots of fire cracker noise and singing and dancing.  We walked down through the massive street markets, which was great fun.  We bought a "genuine" Prada overnight bag which Melissa will find very handy for shopping and saw the "water hotel" - a water and light show which falls down the walls of a city hotel.  our hotel is quite near the river and has a lovely view at night with the lights and decorations.  We had our free beer after the walk (compliments of the hotel), which was very refreshing and just what we needed.