I didn’t sleep too comfortably in my cheap room. I left in the morning and gave the Shanxi Museum another chance. At least I knew how to get there easily this time. In front of the sign in front there was a group of maybe 50 all female students. I kind of interrupted their photo because they all started saying "hi" to me and I gave a little wave and got a big reaction.
I spent the rest of the morning in the museum and then headed back to the train station. When I boarded this train I noticed it was a lot better than the last one I took. Everyone here had a seat, so I knew it would be more comfortable for the next 8 hours to Beijing.
In the middle of the journey, the train just stopped and didn’t move for 90 minutes. This delayed my arrival in Beijing. Many of the buses and subways were beginning to shut down since it was nearing 11:00 at night. First I searched for the bus numbers that were listed in my guide book, but everything changed since it was printed a year and a half ago. So I did a long walk to the nearest subway station. I just missed the train inside, which I learned was the 2nd to last train. I got on the very last train and then got off to transfer to another line. The second subway line was closed and then there were no more trains for the first line, so an employee kicked me out of the station onto the street.
Luckily there was a night bus running the same route as one of the subway lines. So that got me fairly close to my destination. When I arrived, they said I couldn’t check-in because I had only copies of my passport, not the real passport. I explained it was in the Myanmar embassy (no one has even heard of this country). I couldn’t pick it up because the embassy is closed at this time of night. I asked them if I’m supposed to sleep on the street outside? Finally I got some friends to help and talked to the manager and they let me stay.