Guilin is so pretty. It actually has trees and parks and fresh air! The nicest city we've been to in China so far. I was so happy when we arrived, seeing all the greenery and finding a clean, cheap place to stay. After sleeping on buses, boats and trains for the past few nights it will be nice to sleep in a proper bed! Elephant hill was very pretty, and we had really good views from the top of the river and mountains. The river here actually looks clean and we could see people swimming in it and fishermen wading. I even had a paddle in it and posed on top of an elephant for an amusing photo. We saw lots of wildlife up the hill - huge black butterflies, crickets, and rainbow-colored beetles. It¡¯s so nice to be in the countryside.

After that we walked back along the river and stumbled across the 2006 Asia Supermodel competition. Very random. They were painting the elephant hill in water colors (rather talentlessly). We got shouted at by a guard for getting too close to the beauties, before we saw him going off to get a sneaky picture of them with his mobile phone!

Went for some tea in a very nice restaurant, which was the usual low price. We avoided the restaurants with an array of animals (mostly endangered) in cages outside of them - snakes, turtles, birds, (domestic) rabbits¡­. Lovely.

Then we walked through an outdoor market and put my haggling skills to good use, buying a necklace and seal with my name in Chinese characters (engraved in front of us). These came to less than one pound fifty! Anyway we're very tired so we'e off to bed now. We have another busy day ahead of us, involving walking around parks and enjoying the picturesque views¡­