Oeun Sok Heng

Role

I founded Hiddencorners and I write and edit everything on it. There is no other staff. Where a page says "we", it means me, and I would rather say that plainly than imply a newsroom that does not exist.

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 osokheng168.01@gmail.com, or read the corrections policy and the editorial policy.