Today's pollution level is about as good as it gets. What a joy to look out from my balcony and see the line of mountains that stretches along the center of Taiwan.

We've driven to the edge of the mountains twice as we've gone south, once to the beach in Kenting and once when we hiked the eastern coast in early December. It takes about 45 minutes to get to the mountains, mostly through city traffic.

Today was the first time I really missed having a car. It would be so easy to just drive wherever, whenever we had some free time. I didn't mind not having that freedom when I could ride my bike. At least then we could get out of the apartment and find new places to explore. Now the city seems really big and things like commuting and getting groceries take so much longer.

We only have two months before summer break. We'll just keep going with what we've got for now and re-evaluate come fall.

We had a lot of fun at the baseball game tonight. It was the Eda Rhinos from Kaohsiung versus the Elephant Brothers from New Taipei. I have no idea what the significance of the Brothers' name is. The stadium reminded me of the New Britain Rock Cats where we used to take the boys to watch Double A baseball except this one had seating for about 20,000. The level of play was pretty comparable to Double A as well. Manny Ramirez, the former Boston Red Sox player, was on the Rhinos during 2012-13 just before he retired. I think that may say a lot about where Manny landed at the end of his illustrious career.

The noise level in the stadium was pretty deafening from beginning to end. There wasn't even a break when a batter came to the plate. I have to say, the Brothers had a much better organized cheering section than the local team. The fans were split nearly half and half, which is pretty impressive for the Brothers since New Taipei is about a five hour drive from here. Many of the fans had noisemakers to add to the din. I may have to get Lee some for our next game.

One big difference between here and a stadium in the states is that you're allowed to bring in your own food and drinks. The seats are a bit small so you'd have trouble finding space for a cooler but people were bringing in pizza boxes, bags from McDonald's and six-packs of beer. You could buy food at the stadium too and it's cheap. We bought two sodas and a beer for less than $4.00 total. For that amount of money at Fenway Park you can get a sip of water.

Let me start by wishing my lovely niece a wonderful birthday. I've missed my son's on the 9th and my sister's on the 12th. April is a busy month in this family.

It's only noon and I've already had a busy day. A friend offered to take me with her to the produce market this morning, what I like to refer to as the big melon market since it always has a large section of really big watermelons for sale. So she swung by in her car (a car! Wow!) at 7:00 this morning and we are now all stocked up on fruits and vegetables.

Then at nine Lee and I took a taxi to another friend's place and joined him on a hike on Monkey Mountain. Chris and his wife just spent spring break hiking in Nepal so I figured I'd be slowing him down quite a bit but he was kind and kept the pace on the slow side. Spring has turned to summer here with the morning temperature around 82 degrees but the humidity isn't bad yet so the hike was hot but not unbearable.

For the first time I saw a little tiny deer in the woods. Apparently their numbers have been in decline for awhile, maybe because of the rise in numbers of feral dogs, so a deer sighting is pretty rare. That was cool. I also saw plenty of monkeys, naturally, plus a couple of lizards. I have yet to see a snake in Taiwan, which I hope continues for the duration. I try to be logical about the whole snake thing - they're just lizards without legs, right? - but my reaction to them is purely visceral and there is no reasoning with your gut reaction.

We hiked for a couple of hours and are now resting up for an evening of baseball. Baseball is an important sport here in Taiwan so we're going to experience it first hand. We're meeting a bunch of KAS teachers at a large stadium for an Eda Rhinos game. I've been told it will be like watching a double A baseball game in the United States. Apparently the crowds can get quite raucous so it should be fun. I'll let you know.

I got my cast off on Monday with instructions to work on getting back my range of motion and an appointment with the x-ray technician in four weeks. The break on my radius has healed nicely but the chip that broke off the ulna hasn't reattached so it's possible I'll still need surgery to screw it back in place. Bummer. I know I was being optimistic but I was holding onto the fantasy that when the cast came off I'd be all better. But it still hurts, especially because I'm using my arm more, and I still can't ride my bike.

But now it's time to get back to work. The administration and staff at KAS have been working hard to get the new building ready for faculty meetings today and tomorrow and the grand opening of the school on Monday. Like any big building project there have been delays and hurdles so the final cleaning hasn't been done yet and the building is filthy.

Lee and I went in to school yesterday to start unpacking our boxes. Here's my room after a few hours of work.

Yes, it still needs work. It also needs desks and chairs for the students, which everyone else seems to have gotten but somehow my room did not. I did, however, have a bird in my room. He had flown through a window and couldn't get out. Lee and I showed him the opened door to my balcony (yes, I have a really nice balcony outside my classroom) and he flew on his merry way. I think that's a good omen, having a bird in your new classroom, even if he did leave a bit of a mess on one of the tables.

Before it gets too far away for me to remember I want to write about our boating trip off the coast of Phuket on Saturday. After a couple of days of lounging around the pools, strolling up and down the beach and bobbing around in the gentle swells of the ocean we decided we'd like to have one last adventure before we head back to Taiwan. After all, one can only handle so much rest and relaxation.

We found a lovely tour company that sent a bus around to our hotel to pick us up and drive us to the eastern side of the island. (Side note: Did you know that Phuket is an island? I didn't until after we arrived there.) We, along with another 40 or so people, hopped aboard their sightseeing boat and motored for about an hour to the coolest little islands dotting the Andaman Sea.

As we got closer we started to see the limestone formations. It was like looking at the inside of the cave with stalactites dripping down and the ocean dissolving away the edges of the islands.

The coolest part of these islands though, is that many of them are actually rings with hidden lagoons inside. We loaded by pairs into kayaks, each with our own paddle man, and slipped into narrow caves where we often had to lie flat in the boat to fit through the rocks. Then all of a sudden we would pop out into a bay of sorts, completely surrounded by these incredibly steep cliffs. There were mangrove trees and monkeys and fascinating little fish.

This creature is a lung fish. He was swimming around in the water and then popped up onto a branch, above the water line, and clung on with his fins. Bizarre, right?

We circled around an island that was used to film a James Bond movie but the whole area reminded me of scenes from Jurassic Park or Pirates of the Caribbean.

The tour company also cooked us lunch on board so we had steamed fish, tempura shrimp, fried rice and fresh fruit, all of which was delicious. It was a great way to spend our last day of vacation and definitely a highlight of our entire trip.

We made it back home safe and sound. Seven flights, six airports, three brand new countries for me to visit. No lost luggage, no delays of any consequence, decent food, tolerable take-offs and landings. Air travel really doesn't get any better than that.

A few things that Lee and I learned about ourselves and travel: Pretty much every large Asian city is like every other large Asian city and we've now done that, no need to add any more to future travel plans. We would like our vacations to include more of the great outdoors, hiking, biking, boating. The best parts of this trip were spent walking around the countryside in Vietnam and Cambodia, boating on the Mekong Delta, Tonle Sap Lake, the coast of Thailand. Give us the bugs, the rain, the heat or cold. We'll be much happier than being on pavement.

Don't get me wrong, this was a great trip. I learned a lot about the countries we visited, saw some incredible places, met some incredible people. But as we plan our next adventure we'll aim for a little more country, a little less city. We're thinking Borneo, or maybe Bali. Anyone want to join us?

Here it is, the last day of vacation, our last day in Indochina. We spent the day boating and kayaking through some incredibly beautiful islands on the coast of Thailand. I'll post pics when we get back to Taiwan tomorrow night. Right now I need to take a nice little walk in the rain along the beach and then go pack.