As to whether 1st class is worth it, 2nd class seats in high speed trains has pretty good leg space, similar to business class on a flight. The biggest difference is seat width, 47cm compared to 42cm. and seats are more cushy. For real luxury, you have Business class or VIP on some trains. To visualize it, check this video:
If you take the train back from Guilin to Shenzhen, there is a bus from the train station to HK, This video is about Shenzhen north train station. At the end they show you where to get the bus to HK:

What area would you suggest is the a good base for a tourism stay?

The refurbed pujiang is no different than the 168 on wuding lu: famous people stayed in both places, and neither remotely resemble their 1930 counterparts. Don't delude yourself into thinking any sort of "history" is in play. It all comes down to location, and the bund is a poor location.

All tickets from july 6-8 for the 3 fast trains are sold out, just for the "old" night train you can still buy tickets.

@red259

You can still ask an agency like DIY Travel to get a ticket for you, with some luck they can catch one that was given back.
But no guarantee for this.

Or you buy a ticket to Hezhou (G2901 still has a few VIP tickets left for 102,5 Yuan) and in the train you buy a standing ticket to Shenzhen.
Not the best way to travel but that´s always an option if you don´t get your ticket to the final destination.

I'll fly then. No reason to burn extra time messing with trains when I need to be back for my flight out.

So I tried to book the KWL-HKG with avios (or actually I just called BA about it) and they said they are showing no availability at all. I also can not enter Guilin into the BA website when trying to search for partner awards, so it does not seem like this is possible, unless its something where the seats open up last second. Would have been a nice way to use some avios, but then again I never redeemed avios so maybe I did something wrong.

I'm going to take the 8:10 flight to Szx on 7/9. I haven't decided what I will do once I get there whether I will hang out in that area and then take ferry to airport or take a bus into hK before making my way to airport. I feel like I have enough time in HK front loaded. I will stay in Yangshuo for most of my nights there and on the last night I will stay in Guilin so I can be closer to the airport for the morning flight

I actually have been able to pull up kwl-hkg on ba.com before, but my searches today haven't yielded anything ("try back later" message, which is BS of course).

There are several threads in the BA forum on this topic (airports that ba.com doesn't recognize). If you are still interested in pursuing kwl-hkg (or vice versa), I suggest you post to one of the more active ones (much better than starting your own thread): if you can't find the threads in question, try searching the BA forum for danang or hongqiao. While it's possible that there really is no availability on 7/8, my gut tells me that a system glitch is the root cause of the problem (i.e. there is no way in hell that kwl-hkg is sold out for the entire year).

Realistically how much time do I have to book the 7/9 from Guilin to szx? Will this plane sell out? I would like to take another run at BA to see if I can get the award flight, but I'm nervous about getting jammed up if the flight sells out. Also, I know expedia and ctrip are working together. I checked the pricing and they are about the same on both sites. Am I better off booking one vs the other?

Expedia is an investor in Elong (a dying Ctrip competitor)... so it does not collude with Ctrip (at least we hope not). The reason the fares are basically the same is that all agencies pull flights from the same database.

I'm 99.9% certain that your target kwl-szx flight will NOT sell out at 7 days in, and 95% certain that it will still be on offer 3 days in.

I really don't like your "6/9 in limbo" idea, by the way:
Choice One
1) two hour bus ride... and, having to deal with Shenzhen Bay (need to lug all of your stuff across both checkpoints, there are no chairs on the HK side, and it's bound to be miserably hot)
2) three hours in Wanchai/Central/TST (again, with your luggage)
3) taxi to HEX

Choice Two
1) Grab Fuyong-HKIA ferry at around 1030a
2) Arrive HKIA at ~11a
3) Plan on spending 8 hours at HKIA; you might be able to escape

Choice Three
1) Taxi to Shekou (Y100)
2) Buy ferry ticket and give them your luggage (no real worries here)
3) Explore Shenzhen Bay Park, Sea World, Peninsula
4) Take ferry to HKIA
(Actually, this option isn't that bad, but spending the night there instead of Guilin is still much better.)

I'm reserving my 6/28 flight from hong kong to shanghai the 815 on HK airlines. Got it at a price of 791 well 815 after credit card charge, which seems pretty good. Not worth using avios if I can get it that cheap I think.

You can still buy tickets for tomorrow flight so I wouldn´t be worry about to get a ticket in july.


But when you wanna fly from Guilin to Shenzhen the same day as your interntl. flight from Hong Kong I really would check the weather report in advance.
July is still rain season.

Do you mean the Motel 168?

I guess there are different takes on Shanghai. There's certainly a side that is quite expat orientated... the One Park Ave, 'micro-brewery', and 'Bar Rouge' side ... and the more historical art deco, lane-way housing and traditional side. For me it's the latter - combined with the modern when you feel like it - that makes Shanghai such a great place.

"Expedia is an investor in Elong (a dying Ctrip competitor) . . . so it does not collude with Ctrip (at least we hope not)."

May 22, 2015: "Expedia sells eLong stake to Ctrip, others for $671 mln"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0YD43W20150522

With a market cap of about $1 billion it isn't quite dying.