Oeun Sok Heng
“The person who loves to explore the hidden.”
I founded Hiddencorners and I approve everything published on it. Three people work on the site: I choose the subjects, edit the dossiers and answer for the site itself; Tony Hall in Chicago checks every article against the sources cited for it; Tumnhean in Phuket makes the illustrations, the short-form video and the social channels. Where a page says “we”, it means the three of us — a small masthead, named, rather than an implied newsroom. See who does what.
What Hiddencorners is trying to do
Most travel media ranks places by how many people liked them, which guarantees that the top-ranked place is the one you will share with the most strangers. I wanted the opposite instrument — a way of asking how much of a place is left. That became the Silence Index, and everything else on the site is built around it.
How these articles are researched — plainly stated
The dossiers on this site are desk-researched. They are not written from personal visits, and I will never pretend otherwise. That is an unusual thing for a travel publication to admit, and I think the alternative — implying first-hand experience I do not have — is worse.
What that means in practice:
- Every article is built from a minimum of five independent sources.
- Official bodies (national parks, meteorological offices, road authorities, search-and-rescue organisations, UNESCO) are the authority for anything regulatory or safety-related.
- Scientific institutions (USGS, NASA, universities) are the authority for anything scientific.
- Established journalism is used for events and incidents.
- Licensed operators are used only for practical detail — tour length, meeting points, equipment, minimum ages, indicative pricing. Never for a safety or scientific claim.
- Where sources genuinely conflict, I print the conflict rather than picking the tidiest version.
- Every source is listed and linked at the foot of the article, with the reason it was used.
If you have been somewhere recently and I have it wrong, you know more than I do about that place today. Please tell me.
Editorial focus
- Places with real access friction — caps, permits, sponsors, closed seasons, hard roads.
- Places holding a genuinely unresolved question.
- The ethics of visiting somewhere because it is disappearing.
- Practical access information that is actually verified, and dated, and honest about expiring.
What I will not do
- Invent a destination, a quote, a local resident, an expert or a statistic.
- Claim a visit I did not make.
- Publish a workaround for a visitor cap or a community's stated wishes.
- Let a commercial relationship shape a Silence Index score.
Contact and corrections
Corrections are the most useful message you can send. Email osokheng168.03@gmail.com, or read the corrections policy and the editorial policy.