Angel on My Shoulder

Tuck's agricultural field work during the 1960s in Thailand included travel to remote areas that were often challenging to reach. The following passages were taken from accounts published in The Thai Tatler, a newsletter distributed among the western missionary community.

Intending to visit the agriculture experiment station at Fang, Dick Mann, Bill Devine, sixteen Karen [Hill Tribe] students, and I headed north from Chieng Mai . . . . Since the Karen students seldom go anywhere without their band instruments, these were loaded into Bill Devine’s Volkswagen bus along with ten men. The bass fiddle completed the car-load. The rest of the men and gear were loaded into the mission Land Rover.

After four hours on the "all-weather" road [a blacktop road that could be used even in the rainy season] we arrived in Fang and ate supper at a small restaurant. We then drove out of town about three kilometers to find the Thai Church. We were to spend the night in several houses nearby. There we met and talked with church elders before going to bed.

We left after breakfast the next morning in two cars to visit the agriculture experiment station. After getting conflicting directions and talking to many people who knew nothing about it, we drove out of town on a very rough slippery, road. At a muddy stretch, all nineteen of us climbed into the four-wheel-drive Land Rover and plowed through. Another kilometer down the "road" we stopped to ask a man if we were on the right road. He said, "Yes, but the bridge is out, so you won’t be able to get there."

We retraced our route to town and with more questioning, located another road to the experiment farm. This time the cars had to go through bumper-deep water while trying to stay on the road, which ran between flooded rice fields. Bill and his Volkswagen got stuck several times in muddy places and the students had to push him out.

Just when the road was getting a little better some women on foot informed us we couldn’t get to the experiment station on that road either. The bridge was sia (ruined). We finally managed to get turned around and headed back. The Thai know that farangs (white foreigners) are crazy, and we didn’t disappoint them. One farang rode on top of the Land Rover to take pictures of the Volkswagen as it came swimming across a flooded area. We also attempted to see one of the oil wells at Fang, but this, too, was not possible due to flooded roads.

Traveling to Sangkla included a boat trip on the river:

We left the Bangkok guest house about 3:00 p.m. in a Volkswagen van to drive to Kanchanaburi where the graveyard is for the English, Australians, and New Zealanders killed as they were forced to build the "Death Railway" for the Japanese in 1943 and 1944. It was about ninety miles, a two and a half hour drive. We stayed there in the hotel overnight and got on a train at 6:00 a.m. for a two hour ride to Wan Po at the end of the railroad. There we got into hangyows or long-tailed boats, so-called because of the long-spindled motors which allow them to go in the fairly shallow water. The boats are 30 feet long and 3 feet wide, a 4-cylinder Isuzu diesel engine powers each and the propeller shaft goes through a long hollow tube about 15 feet long, which is one unit with the engine. They can haul up to three-quarters of a ton. We sat in these boats from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., when we finally got to Sangkla, 120 miles upriver. There were two boats as there were quite a few returning from the conference. The two boat drivers tried to race as they went upstream, to add to the spice of the trip. The river was about as wide as the Yakima River in the springtime.

We stopped at rest stops along the way, but it was still tiring to sit so long at a time. Men were collecting long bamboo poles along the river to make rafts to float teakwood and other hardwood logs down the river to the sawmill. Elephants drag the logs down to the riverside, the logs are tied to the bamboo rafts and they are towed by river tugs. Each bamboo raft has a bamboo hut for a man to live in so he can keep track of his logs.

The government is threatening to forbid the hill rice growing because the people have to burn off new sections of forest preserve every two years or so. Since three-quarters of the rice is this type, the people face a serious agricultural problem. We’ll try to help them get crop rotation started, planting legumes to enrich the soil, and encouraging other crops. The main problem is that the local villagers are pretty well satisfied with things the way they are now—not too interested in improvements and not aware that the government may force them to change their ways.