We moved to Phuket. Now we're writing the guide we wish we'd had.

How Fredrik ended up here

In 2019, Fredrik packed a single bag and moved to Rawai. He'd done the research, understood the basics about Thailand, and genuinely believed the move would be relatively straightforward.

He was wrong about almost everything.

The first month was chaotic. What he'd read about Thai Immigration didn't match the reality of the Chalong office. Finding housing that wasn't either a five-star resort or a party-scene condo took weeks of wrong turns. His Thai was terrible. Walking into Bangkok Hospital Phuket with what he thought was a simple question, he'd leave more confused than when he arrived. Opening a KBank account required documents nobody had mentioned, and the bank staff were as puzzled as he was.

But he stayed. Made mistakes, figured things out, asked the right questions, and slowly Phuket stopped feeling like chaos and started feeling like home. Six years later, he's lived through three rounds of visa law changes, helped dozens of people find housing, learned which hospitals actually communicate in English, sorted banking and insurance, navigated a work permit, and accumulated the kind of practical knowledge that only shows up through years of lived experience.

How Morten ended up here

Morten arrived a year later, in 2020, with his family. The priority was different from day one: school admissions. The family settled in Bang Tao to be near the international school options — BISP, UWC Thailand, HeadStart — and what was planned as a two-year relocation quickly became permanent.

A family move exposes an entirely different slice of Phuket life: the school-run logistics that make some areas workable and others miserable, the realities of dependent visas tied to school enrolment, the cost calculus when you're budgeting for a household rather than a single person, and the expat community that exists around schools versus the one that exists around beaches.

Between Fredrik's six years of single-resident experience and Morten's family perspective, we realised we were covering almost every version of the Phuket expat story — and that no existing site was doing the same.

Why we built this

There are thousands of Thailand travel blogs. There are relocation sites that cover the entire country in surface-level detail. But there was nothing written specifically for people moving to Phuket, staying long-term, and needing honest, Phuket-specific information.

Phuket is not generic Thailand. It's a 30,000+ expat community with its own culture, challenges and dynamics. The visa process may be the same as the rest of the country, but the neighbourhoods are completely different from Bangkok or Chiang Mai. Healthcare matters differently here. Cost of living varies enormously by area. The job market is specific to tourism, hospitality and remote work. Schools, banking, social life — all distinctly Phuket.

So we decided to build the resource we needed when we arrived. Not a travel guide. Not generic advice recycled from other Thailand sites. A real guide, written by two long-term residents with complementary experience — one single-resident, one family — covering everything a relocating expat genuinely needs.

We made ourselves three promises: be honest, even when that means saying something is more complicated than it looks. Be specific to Phuket, not Thailand in general. Never recommend anything we haven't personally used or verified.

Our editorial standards

We only recommend what we've personally used. When we recommend Bangkok Hospital Phuket, it's because one of us has been a patient there. When we write about banking, we've opened that account. When we link to a health insurance provider, we've reviewed the policy and spoken to other expats who've made claims. Some links on this site earn a commission — but the recommendation comes first, and we only link to things we'd genuinely suggest to a friend.

Everything is Phuket-specific. You won't find generic "Thailand advice" here. Every guide covers Phuket specifically — the actual neighbourhoods, the specific hospitals, the real Chalong Immigration Office, the banks with expat-friendly branches in Phuket Town. When visa rules change at Thai Immigration, we update immediately.

We update constantly. Thailand's visa landscape shifts. Property prices move. New hospitals open. New schools take international enrolments. We live here full-time, so we notice these changes and update guides to reflect current reality — not what was true three years ago.

We're honest about trade-offs. Bang Tao is stunning but expensive and car-dependent. Patong is convenient but noisy. Phuket Town is the best value but culturally the biggest adjustment. We won't tell you every area is perfect — we describe the real pros and cons so you can make the right choice for your situation.

Every article has a named author. Every guide on this site is written and by-lined by either Fredrik or Morten — both with real LinkedIn profiles, real photos, real lived experience. No anonymous "staff writers," no AI ghost-authors.