Travelling to Bagan Lalang

We’ll be travelling to Bagan Lalang this Saturday for an exciting opportunity to give something back to the environment — planting trees to offset CO2 that we took out from the environment and doing some beach cleanup. We did some estimation of our CO2 footprint (read here) and yes, we should be planting more trees!

Some interesting facts about trees.

• One person causes about 7 to 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide released to the environment in a year.
• On the other hand, one tree removes about one tonne of CO2 over its lifetime.
• So, if we plant at least 7 trees, we would be contributing towards some degree of carbon offset — it will take awfully a long time (a tree’s lifetime?); but that’s still a positive contribution.

The better benefits would be to help do something to prevent further coastal soil erosion in Bagan Lalang. It’s close to our home, and a great place to picnic while enjoying the sunsets. Such a shame as we were told that some man-made irrigation projects are now impacting the flow of the river; dislodging the riverine soil much needed by mangroves — the ecological impacts are certainly disastrous. So, it is really our minute contribution to this place while enjoying the weekend. We did hear many rumours about the beach being dirty, and that the water is murky:  we are easy to please and we are sure to find that special charm of Bagan Lalang beach. Will share some photos soon.

[post-travel notes]

We planted at least 20 seedlings of rhizophora mucolata or Bakau Kurap (malay)!

We also learnt something new about this particular species of asiatic mangrove:

• Rhizophora means “root bearer” in Greek.
• Rhizophora use ultrafiltration at the root level to exclude salt
• Rhizophora is the preferred mangrove wood for firewood and to make charcoal. It produces an even heat and is easy to split for firewood — well, as the MNS staff lamented: the charcoal with best quality is commercially exported out; and the locals would have to make do with the lower grade ones, ‘as usual’ – he said.
• It is used as an astringent and to treat angina, haemorrhaging (extracts from the seedlings in Indochina); diarrhoea (China, Japan): diabetes, dysentery, hematuria. A poultice of the leaves are used to relief armoured fish stings. Old leaves and roots are used during childbirth (Malay). Bark is used to treat blood in the urine (Burma).

The beach cleaning was another excursion — it provided us an afternoon view of the beach with the tide’s out; and the recently opened Goldcoast resort (very impressive, we certainly want to check this out in future).

The beach was absolutely not as bad as we initially thought would be: in fact, probably better than one of the beaches in Bali when the tide’s out — the exposed seabed was clean; and not filled with dying vegetations and muddy spots as we saw in Bali. Of course, the water here is not as clear.

Bagan Lalang beach is something worth to go back to —  we heard that the sunset here is stunning; the rambutans, durians & dragonfruits are everywhere, the seafood is tasty and fresh: hmmm… this could be a place to drag that unused tent out from our storeroom for a little Saturday afternoon picnic!