Mangrove Italian for Beginners

On Saturday and Sunday mornings Thai TV broadcasts an excellent programme called English Breakfast, in which various points of the English language are explained in a humours fashion. Examples might include the crucial and profound difference between expat and expert. We had our own version this week; Italian for Mangroves. It was our great pleasure to welcome Monica Aureggi and Claudio Conti from an Italian NGO Naucrates. The Italian duo runs a project that has been active on Koh Phra Thong, Phang Nga province for several years. Monica, who speaks excellent English, tries to monitor and promote the protection of sea turtles. Claudio, whose English is more limited, is studying and restoring the very biodiverse local mangrove ecosystem. Both have a huge amount of knowledge in their fields. Experts not expats.

Monica and Claudio live on an olive farm 50km outside Rome for most of the year, visiting Thailand twice a year to work at Koh Phra Thong. So we were thrilled that they took the time to visit Krabi on their way back home, together with Ning Enright from MAP and Barry Bendell.
First we took a boat trip round the estuary mangroves. To the bemusement of our regular boatman Bang Non we pulled in at many places to look at trees, pull off leaves, head-butt bulbous fruits and photograph flowers. [That low scrubby bush was Brownlowia tersa, Claudio. Sorry.] Then to lunch. Monica is happy to indulge in all Thai foods but Claudio is less catholic in his consumption... unless we were in an Italian restaurant, of which Krabi has at least three good ones. Lunch thus became another Italian lesson of slow eating, delicious food and tiny coffees. The meal concluded we headed to the site at Bang Lang Da.

After the obligatory coffee – a drip-feed of which is a good way to keep Claudio calm and happy – we toured the mud. K’ Ning declined to dance in the dirt but charmed the local crab group, which joined us at the pond. Monica kindly translated from the pond edge, also keeping clean, as we talked through the plan and what had been done. Needless to say Claudio immediately understood the activities and had some piquant observations and advice, all of which will be followed through as fast as I can dig.
We also discussed the idea with Bang Don of trying to combine crab fattening in semi-submerged boxes in the pond. Traditionally combining the two properly has been tricky as mangroves need a daily flush of water, where most crab ponds have impounded water. Watch this blog.
At the end, Claudio looked at the site and the digging and in deliberate and perfect English said to me, “You are a mud lobster!” From anyone else this might be an insult. From Claudio it was an honour as well as being perfectly true as mud lobsters are ecological engineers, digging burrows that are 2-3 meters deeps and producing huge hills in the process, which various mangrove species then colonise. Dinner was at a Thai restaurant called Gotung. Claudio performed his dinner table trick of eating raw spring onions in lime juice as way of adding a bit of oral aggression to fried rice.

Thank you for your visit. It was a pleasure and an honour. Come back soon.