About Us

ExpatDen’s mission is to make it easy for current and future expats all over the world to comfortably and confidently live, work, study, retire, or start a business abroad.

Originally, Karsten Aichholz started this website as his personal blog. As a German expat living in Thailand, he wanted to share what he learned from his ten years of experience with living and running businesses in the county.

However, because of the in-depth, unmatchable guides he published, the website became popular with both those wanting to move to Thailand and those in the country struggling to overcome specific areas. So, he decided to expand his blog into ThailandStarterKit.

Within a few years, ThailandStarterKit became the online resource for expats in Thailand. The in-depth guides written by expats who had firsthand experiences with each topic couldn’t be found anywhere else. 

ThailandStarterKit’s team of expat writers soon grew, and Karsten decided to expand the website once again, this time into ExpatDen in 2018.

ExpatDen’s goal is to help current and future expats all over the world discover how they can live, work, study, retire, or start a business abroad successfully.

Meet the Team Behind ExpatDen

ExpatDen is made up of a team of expats who’ve been working and living abroad for a good portion of their lives. Each team member has his or her own reason for becoming an expat, whether it was to start a business, retire, work as a digital nomad, or follow family members into a new country. 

In any case, all of ExpatDen’s team members share a common goal – helping current and future expats by writing in detail about their experiences around a specific, practical topic.

Having said that, let’s meet the ExpatDen team.

Karsten Aichholz, ExpatDen Founder

Karsten is a 40-something-year-old German pro-gamer turned tech entrepreneur. He worked in India, Dubai, Austria, Germany, and Thailand. At the age of 23, he negotiated an investment promotion with the Royal Thai Government to leverage a Bangkok-based video game company from zero to US$1 million in revenue within five years.

Today, he passionately provides advice to fellow expats and gives talks at events and universities.

Saran Lhawpongsawad, ExpatDen Project Manager

Saran is a Bangkok native who has experience working in the United States, Japan, and Thailand. He specializes in copywriting with a focus on long-form, evergreen content.

As ExpatDen’s Project Manager, Saran oversees the website’s daily operations. He also writes guides for the Thailand section of the website based on his local insights with living and running a business in The Land of Smiles. 

John Wolcott, ExpatDen Editor

John Wolcott is an American expat who’s been living in Thailand since April of 2014. Currently, he enjoys traveling around the country with his family in a former commuter van that he converted into a mobile office/campervan dubbed “The Blue Beast.”

The former New Jersey native has been an Editor at ExpatDen since 2016. He’s written or edited close to a hundred articles for expats on the topics of finance, health, relocation, education, insurance, and more.

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Patrick Limcaco, ExpatDen Editor

Patrick Limcaco is a Filipino expat in Bangkok since 2014. He currently works as a content marketing manager for an international website management company. He has written guides about expat life in Thailand for ExpatDen and currently serves as one of their editors.

He dreams of getting some of his fiction published someday.

Phoebe Storm, Content Manager

Phoebe Storm is an Australian who has spent more time in Asia than in Australia. With more than 16 years of China experience plus five years and counting in Thailand, Phoebe loves to help others figure things out. She was writing how-to guides way before anyone was paying her to do it.

She has been writing and editing for ExpatDen since October, 2020 and lives by the belief that the world is a tiny place and we should spend all of our time exploring it and challenging ourselves.

Francine Kaye Acelar, Content Manager

Francine Kaye Acelar was based in Thailand for 16 years and moved home to the Philippines in 2021. She writes copy and content for companies in Asia and the US during the weekdays. And runs a photography studio or wrestles with her two daughters on the weekends.

Francine has written content for ExpatDen Thailand since 2017 and is now helping provide the same wealth of knowledge and insights to expats in the Philippines.

Tyler Scott, ExpatDen Tech Guy

Tyler is a Canadian who first came to Thailand in 2009. He met his wife here and they have a young daughter taking up a lot of their time these days.

He handles a wide range of technical matters at ExpatDen, including system administration, programming, and website maintenance. He occasionally helps edit articles as well.

Anchalee Koboon, ExpatDen Web Administrator

Anchalee was born in Phetchabun, the province amusingly referred to as the southern part of Northern Thailand, the northern part of Central Thailand, and the border of Northeast Thailand.

Anchalee passionately works on the readability of ExpatDen guides to ensure readers have an enjoyable experience while on the website.

Contributing Authors

In addition to the ExpatDen team members above, many contributing authors from all over the world also help the website create long-form guides on all areas of expat life.

Let’s meet ExpatDen’s contributing writers.

The list goes on……

About the Company

This website is registered, owned and operated by Lyaras Limited, located at Room 607, Yen Sheng Centre, 64 Hoi Yuen Road, Kwun Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

Media Coverage

ExpatDen publications were featured in a number of publications:

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Contact Us

If you want to share some thoughts about the website or have any questions, you can contact us here.