On the way time passes and things change.

Rode around the south-western side of the island today, a striking mix of Westin Resorts with blacked-tinted tour buses and locals with tin corrugated roofs cooling off in the ocean.

Took a turn up the furthest west road, that eventually goes to dirt. Tour buses don’t come up here - it’s a place of a few farms and lots and lots of trees. Through them, if you look carefully, you can see the ocean.

I took this picture knowing that if I come back in 20 years, it won’t look like this. The hillside will be mostly clearcut, and there will be a series of tiered, modernist-looking condos installed all the way down to the water. Tour buses will chug up the hill, then slide into the queue. It’s only an hour from the airport, you know.

I don’t say this sitting on a high horse. Development is complicated, and I, Johnny Foreigner with my USD buying power have no right to say one word about it.

But it’s, again, the only constant is change.

I once claimed Oregon as the greenest place on earth, in terms of hue. I was simply wrong. This island trumps it by an order of magnitude. Every single millimeter of land has something green growing out of it, and is typically shaded by two or three more layers of green, leafy things. There’s ample moisture and ample sun. If it weren’t for the crowds, this must be a plant’s idea of heaven.

But that’s in the places that aren’t yet developed. The developed parts look sometimes like city streets and sometimes like shopping malls. There aren’t trees or plants or anything green there growing. When you look at the satellite map of Phuket, it’s two colors: green, and gray. I hope, just for me, in the years ahead, some of that green gets to stay.