The streets of Taipei churn with traffic, but through all the orderly channels absent in Hanoi. The fleets of motorbikes, halting at precisely delineated squares at intervals, marked a strange transition for me.

I realized I had been circling my way back to the heart of Japan — from the foreign territory of Thailand and Cambodia, to the more closely linked Vietnam, and now my island’s next door neighbor — teeing up for the flight to Tokyo and then homeward.

With just three nights to absorb Taiwan, I reluctantly relinquished hopes of traveling by rail to their jewel attraction, Sun Moon Lake. I would concentrate on all the fascinations its capital city had to offer.

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