About DurianDesk

Who runs this

I'm Tytus. I have lived in Thailand for six years: the first two on Phuket, the years since in Hua Hin. Before that I spent fifteen years running my own businesses, all of them in one way or another about helping people get things sorted.

What started this site was reading the same questions over and over on expat forums. What is the weather actually like in October. Which visa do I need, and what do I do once I am here. The answers were scattered across a dozen threads, half of them years out of date, and no way to tell which half.

So this is what I wish those people had found: one place that answers the whole question instead of a piece of it. And if you need something done on the ground here rather than just explained — write to me. That is what the contact page is for, and I answer it myself.

Why Hua Hin

Phuket is beautiful, but for everyday life it was too much: crowds everywhere, traffic so bad that the five kilometres to school took us fifty minutes to an hour each way, and a party scene that never really switches off.

Hua Hin has the beaches and the sea too, but it is a more local town. There are tourists, just not in the same numbers. It is no accident that the royal family chose it for a seaside residence: the Klai Kangwon palace has stood here since the 1920s.

Life here is calm, and in my experience everyday prices are about a third of Phuket's, where they have drifted away from the rest of the country. That is why the help on the ground I offer is based here.

Why I started DurianDesk

For two reasons. I want to save people the beginner's mistakes I keep seeing newcomers make. And it is the kind of business I believe in: one where doing well means doing something good for other people.

Why this exists

Most of what is written about moving to Thailand is either years out of date or copied from something that was. The visa rules changed on 15 September 2026, and within a week the wrong country counts were circulating on sites that rank near the top of search results.

That is the gap this site is for. Not more opinion about Thailand — there is plenty. Facts you can check, with the date they were checked and a link to where they came from.

How the figures are handled

• Nothing is written from memory. Every visa figure on this site traces to a Thai government page — the published rules enforce it, so a page citing a blog or a news site simply will not build.
• Every claim carries a date. Immigration rules, prices and ownership rules each show when they were last checked, and pages past their re-check date are flagged automatically rather than quietly ageing.
• A gap is left as a gap. Where a festival date has not been announced, or sources disagree, the page says so instead of guessing. Several entries in the events calendar say "date not announced yet" for exactly that reason.
• Weather is history, not prediction. The trip planner shows what the weather actually did on your dates in past years. A forecast months out would be a guess dressed up as data.

How it pays for itself

Some outgoing links to booking, insurance and transport services pay a commission if you book through them, at no extra cost to you. They are marked wherever they appear. There is also a tip link for anyone who finds the site useful and wants to say so.

We also arrange services through firms in Thailand we have checked ourselves — immigration, schools, accounting, property. You deal with us; the firm does the work and pays us out of its own fee, so you pay what you would going to them directly. That is what the contact page is for.

None of that changes what is written here. A recommendation that does not work out costs more than it earns, which is the entire commercial logic of the place.

What this is not

DurianDesk is not a law firm, a visa agency, a property agent or a travel agency, and does not provide those services itself. Nothing here is legal, financial or immigration advice. See the disclaimer and the data sources page.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, please say so through the contact page. Errors get fixed and the change is recorded — the immigration changes log exists partly for that.