Filed: November 15, 2025
Tag along and enjoy a slow morning in rural Thailand — soft light spilling over the rice fields, cows moving in quiet procession toward the horizon. From there we visit the two original matriarchs of the village: women who’ve seen nearly a century of harvests and festivals. One, the village obstetrician, has delivered every child for seventy years. The other, a farmer still tending her field at ninety-seven (although her “field” now has been reduced to her yard, but she keeps it immaculately kept). Together they anchor the memory of this place.
As the day fades, we wander down to the local “cafe” — a small market/meeting space few outsiders ever see — where we sit at the lone table with men who’ve tilled the same soil all their lives. Out here, Oscar’s not quite a foreigner anymore. Just another voice at the table, another story in the dust.
Oscar Slamp’s raw dispatches from deep inside the provinces of Northeast Thailand.
This isn’t the Thailand you’ve seen on YouTube. You won’t find the standard-issue tourist-trap temples and night markets here.
We slip through rusted gates into the “Forest Temples” most don’t even know exist and visit night markets so far off grid even the GPS throws its hands up. Locals Only kinds of places.
This is a layer of Thailand most will never rub up against. And, it rubs back, in the most beautiful of ways.
Faces of the village, Buddhist rituals, temples, funerals, cremations, Monk ordinations, sak yant ceremonies, Issan food, farming, festivals and border runs. Raw doc-style storytelling: no influencer gloss, no travelogue polish. Just fragments.
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Thailand • Laos • Cambodia • Vietnam • Hong Kong • Singapore • Philippines • Japan
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From the margins,
— Oscar