The Lonely Planet describes this as a place that you DO NOT want to stay in for long - "go straight to Yangshou". A place where touts and taxi drivers will aggressively harass you at every opportunity - even the noticeboard at our hostel seemed to confirm this (with warning messages from other travellers)!
We quite liked the place!

We weren't harassed (certainly no more than any other city) and there was enough to do to keep us busy for a few days.
There is some lovely karst topography surrounding the city - shame the weather was never good enough to let us see it in it's full glory.
Also worth looking at was the huge Seven Star Park - a huge city park with such wonders as the Seven Star Cave (very big); Camel Hill (looks like a camel); large plastic Disney characters everywhere (I'm sure they're an infringement of copyright); and a zoo (very depressing except for the panda's who have a brand new enclosure).
However, the most famous site in Guilin is Elephant Trunk Hill (I'll let you guess what that looks like)! The most impressive thing about this rock formation is not how closely it resembles said creature, but how they try to extract as much money out of you as possible!!!