Saturday Night in the Swamp

No sense in letting a good swamp hole go to waste.

Out here in deep Isaan, standing water is never just standing water. It’s a question. A temptation. A dare. And for young guys especially, it’s nearly impossible to walk past a muddy depression in the ground without wanting to get the water out of it—by any means necessary—just to see what’s hiding below the surface.

On this particular Saturday night, the hope was simple: a couple of Isaan staples for dinner. East Asian bullfrogs. Asian swamp eels. Both are common here, both are prized, and both require a certain willingness to wade knee-deep into the muckiest mud you can imagine.

What followed was pure village logic at work. Buckets, bare hands, laughter, and a steady commitment to the process. Draining the hole. Probing the mud. Reading subtle movements in water that most people would never notice. It’s not clean. It’s not polite. But it’s skillful in a way that only comes from growing up around this land.

Admittedly, it was funnier in person than any camera could fully capture. But even on film, you can see the mindset clearly—the ingenuity, the confidence, and the joy of doing something familiar with friends. Boys being boys, in the most literal sense of the phrase.

Once the catch was made, the night shifted naturally into preparation. Cleaning the quarry. Throwing together a fresh papaya salad. Pulling herbs straight from a nearby tree. Rice whiskey appeared. A few beers followed. The jokes got louder. The work got lighter.

Nothing about it was staged. Nothing was performed for the camera. It was just a small, ordinary Saturday night in the village—muddy, noisy, improvised, and deeply human.