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Short Sunny Göteborg
After the first wave of fog and before the last.
Christmas in Göteborg
Just a few more hours of what’s become a tradition – spending Christmas in Göteborg/Gothenburg. Without getting into any grimy details, the past few days have mirrored the city’s winter weather: mostly clear, with a persistent fog showing up now and then. As per usual, the urge for a prolonged detox is knocking on the door…
Merry Christmas 2025
For the past three years, we’ve spent a couple of days celebrating Christmas in Göteborg with Charlotte’s parents and then with friends. Charlotte’s father, Allan, is now living in a healthcare facility for folks with dementia. Her mother Agneta continues to live at their apartment in Johanneberg, just a few doors up from where I used to live on Vidblicksgatan. Charlotte, Elle, and I ate dinner with Agneta and shared presents on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. Charlotte spent quality time with her father.
Wish you all a very Merry Christmas 2025!
Safari Book Project
I shot this in Botswana during a five-day safari in the Okavango Delta. According to somewhat reliable sources, this bird is a lilac-breasted Roller with the scientific (Latin) name: Coracias caudatus. This birdie will definitely make into my new book project, tentatively titled: Safari – Botswana, Kenya, Morocco & South Africa
Home Made Pizza
After a full day of work and some logistical stuff that had to be taken care of, I decided that making pizza was my easiest option. I typically buy readymade dough and to get it to be more like a handmade one, I perforate the surface with a fork before pre-baking it using our old oven’s convection function. After about 4-5 minutes, I take the hot, fluffy and semi-crusty dough out, brush on the tomato sauce: canned and sundried tomatoes mixed with garlic, salt, pepper, garlic, and oregano. Finally, I pile on the toppings: mushrooms, kalamata olives, spicy bell peppers, red onions, and buffalo mozzarella.
Winter Solstice in Malmö, Sweden
Winter in Skåne definitely has its moments. Starting at 16:03 yesterday, Sunday – the winter solstice – the days will slowly but surely begin to grow lighter. Of course, we won’t really notice it for a while; the days are still going to be ridiculously short, and the darkness will linger far too long. But psychologically, I feel much better just knowing we’ve turned the corner. That the curve is finally moving in the right direction.
Especially after our autumn trip, when for three months – with only a few exceptions – we had sunshine and warmth. There’s something about a steady dose of daylight that makes you feel a bit more… human. And when you come back home to Skåne, grey and early dusk, it’s comforting to lean on one simple fact: from now on, minute by minute, the light is crawling its way back.
Running from Jet Lag
Yesterday’s morning run may not have chased away the inevitable jet lag, nor set any records. Our bodies were still scattered across multiple time zones – loitering somewhere above Southeast Asia, briefly detained in the Middle East, while the calendar, with official indifference, insisted that we were in Europe and Scandinavia. But a slow, steady 5k jog in the crisp Scandinavian air – lungs filling with cold clarity, legs remembering their rhythm – proved invigorating and, if only temporarily, until the next wave of jetlagginess set in, energizing.
Traffic
Here are a few loosely compiled clips captured this last week in Asia from various places along Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok, Thailand. I’m considering adding other similar clips of Bangkok’s traffic and putting together a longer short.
We’re back in Malmö now, after three months, two countries, seven cities, nine hotels, ten train trips, and seven plane rides. Unpleasant incidents: 0.
Teppanyaki
Shot this during last night’s visit to the teppanyaki joint in the basement at Terminal 21 in Bangkok. It’s one of those eateries you stumble onto by sheer happenstance, where delicious Japanese comfort food is served at a reasonable price by friendly staff. Much of the trip has been about food. While not a foodie, I do love comforting meals and love traveling just for the sake of food.
Nightshift in Bangkok
357. That’s how many meters separate the hotel from BTS Asok – our nearest Skytrain station from Soi 11 along Sukhumvit Road. I mention the distance only because I’ve noticed how that relatively short stretch changes character in a rather brutal way once dusk begins to fall.
Late in the morning, the pavement is mostly filled with disoriented tourists who have just arrived in our part of the city or are on their way out. They come from all over the world. Some languages I can recognize, or at least trace to a country or region where I know that particular tongue is spoken.
Early in the morning, when I’m on my way to the Swedish Fitness24 (which has several gyms here), the street is mainly adorned with the leftovers from the night before. I see night owls of every conceivable kind – several who really ought to reconsider their lifestyle choices – stagger past me or shout something cheeky I don’t understand when they see my purposeful stride clad in gym garb.
One day, around lunchtime, I encountered a small horde of middle-aged Spanish-speaking tourists. Most of them wore oversized sunglasses and tiny shoulder bags, clutched tightly against their bodies with one hand. With the other, they snapped photos and shot video clips on their phones.
The other day, I ran into a group of seven or eight chatty elderly Chinese retirees in green and yellow hats, doing their best to follow their female guide through the already congested sidewalk.
In white, sensible trainers, the elderly women and men shuffled forward. The guide kept the group moving with well-rehearsed shouts and persistent flag-waving. Buses, motorcycles, cyclists, and tuk-tuks pass in a constant stream along Sukhumvit Road. It’s calmer on the side streets (soi), but traffic there is faster – and more treacherous.
Above Sukhumvit, Skytrains glide in and out of Asok station, packed with people heading to or from work, home, school, daycare, hospital, or a shopping trip. The noise from the street is so intense and layered that it’s hard to distinguish individual sources. Talk about surround sound. After a while, you just stop trying.
One afternoon this week, I put on my headphones, turned the volume up to eleven, and walked a few blocks while air-guitaring an old favorite, White Sister. People stared. But many smiled too. I think.
Bangkok isn’t cooking right now. It’s simmering. At this time of year, the temperature is manageable – almost pleasant. Still, the heat and humidity settle like a lid over the city’s sidewalks and inevitably creep inside your clothes until everything sticks. The air is saturated with smells – sizzling street food, diesel exhaust, over-applied perfume, tobacco smoke from bars spilling onto the sidewalk. I pass through a small cloud carrying the sweet note of a joint someone nearby has just fired up.
Like the soundscape, an olfactory cacophony emerges – repulsive yet also alluring. 1980s hits seep from open bar doors, blending with loud laughter and fragments of conversation. A constant rumble reigns. Bangkok’s labored breathing.
Everything happens at once. But only the friendly guy selling fake Rolexes and the shifty dude hauling a carry-on suitcase filled with God knows what inside still manage to catch my attention, despite my having passed them countless times without showing any interest in either’s wares.
The hotel sits on a street with an almost uncountable number of bars. The big ones are truly enormous. The smaller ones have just four or five stools. Men seated closest to the street wear tank tops or brightly colored tees. Bar girls dart back and forth with drinks, flirting lightly – mostly, perhaps, to prompt more orders.
There’s frequent toasting. Ashtrays are overflowing. Monthly savings goals are temporarily suspended. This is where people come to live in the present and be in the moment. Almost like an unironic field exercise, Charlotte and I sat down yesterday at one of the neighborhood’s seediest watering holes.
A man my age, with roughly the same “hairstyle,” had arranged empty bottles around his part of the bar. I suspect he was keeping score to make sure he kept to his limit. Nearby, another man appeared to be traveling with ChatGPT. I heard him ask his phone, “So where would you like to eat tonight, my darling?” The voice replied, “How about Italian, Sweetie? Want me to check nearby places with good reviews?”
When night falls, those 357 meters become tougher – and more cynical. Along the rail separating sidewalk and road stand long, slender figures in tight dresses and vividly colored bodysuits. I find it hard to tell who is what. I watch a few middle-aged men – possibly Korean – approach a small cluster of those lanky figures.
Further along, a woman in white and another in black stand several meters apart, lifted by towering heels and heavy makeup.
Time, as we know, is not easily concealed. On the way back we zigzag past hustlers from India, Africa, and Thailand selling things we neither want nor need.
I’m reminded of Canal Street and Times Square in the mid-1980s – seedy, slummy, sleazy, and strangely fascinating. Like a film that could never be directed.
Jon, a Swede, sat next to Nok, the bar’s manager, where we stopped for a beer the other night. Jon mostly stared out at the street. Perhaps he was thinking about his apartment in Eskilstuna, about the 85-inch TV he barely had time to install before flying here. Nok looked equally blasé as TikTok clips flickered across her cracked screen. She laughed, showing Pelle two AI dogs chatting in an AI-generated podcast studio.
On the way home, we passed another dozen bars, filled with men and couples from everywhere. There’s room for everyone. Past Burger King, New York Pizza, Taco Bell, a woman selling diluted pomegranate juice, two food trucks – one with fruit, the other woking Pad Thai so fiercely flames licked the ceiling.
So many impressions. Nothing new, yet all of it demands attention. It’s dirty, abrasive, rough – and the pulse is irresistible. I stop. Listen. Smell. Look. Feel. Camera out. Click, click.
This is my third month away from everyday life. As in 1988, when I first came to Asia, I’ll soon return home with my mind and heart full. But now I long for home. Above all, I miss Elle. And I actually miss the emptiness of Swedish winter. How’s that for masochism?
I miss our bed and the certainty that the only ones who’ve drooled on my pillow are Charlotte or me.While most people want a vacation from everyday life, everyday life becomes, for me, a vacation from traveling.
Benjakitti Park: The Green Mile Skywalk
I found this Nelumbo nucifera – the Sacred Lotus – growing quietly beneath The Green Mile, the relatively new skywalk that links Benjakitti Park with Lumpini Park.
Through this elevated ribbon of concrete and greenery, the two parks now bridge the Sukhumvit area with Silom and Saladeng in Bang Rak district – a soft, walkable seam stitched into an otherwise relentless city.
Bangkok is always evolving. Shifting gears. Testing new ideas. I love this about the Thai capital. There is an ambition at work here that feels so confident. It’s on a level that perhaps only an ancient city can pull off without erasing its identity in the process.
Much of what I fell in love with nearly forty years ago is still here. The vibe. The contradictions. Above all, the people – still remarkably open, friendly, and good-hearted, in a way that feels neither staged nor strategic. It is this continuity, running quietly beneath all the change, that awakens my wanderlust and keeps pulling me back.
Lunch at North: Khao Soi Chicken
Yesterday, my buddy Gary and I had lunch at a fairly famous (and in the Michelin Guide mentioned) restaurant called North on Sukhumvit Soi 33 in Bangkok. It was Gary who recommended their Khao Soi Chicken — a dish that, at 300 THB during lunch service, feels almost underpriced for what you get. Almost.
I’d enjoyed a few good meals up in Chiang Mai, the spiritual home of the dish, but none of them came close to what the chefs at North cooked up for us yesterday. The moment I poured in all the accompaniments — the crispy dried noodles, the sliced shallots, the pickled vegetables, and the extra broth — a much wider spectrum of flavors and aromas opened up. I am not a foodie, but I do have a sensitive palette that can detect and discern nuances in textures and flavors.
The spice level of my Khao So was perfectly calibrated: present but never overwhelming. The chicken was tender, juicy, and fully infused with the coconut curry it had been simmered in. Each bite had layers – the aromatics from the curry, the tang from the pickles, the crunch from the noodles – all merging into something complex yet familiar and, above all, incredibly comforting.
It was one of those rare dishes where every element earns its place and nothing feels accidental. One spoonful in, and I understood immediately why Gary suggested North. Their Khao Soi is on a completely different level.
Back in Chiang Mai
I’ve just eaten a large, triangular plate filled with wonderfully delicious – albeit slightly spicy – Pad Prik King Moo Krob, served with a steaming bowl of Khao Suay.
Across the table sat Charlotte, eating Khao Pad Gung Rad Pak Phad. The food was so good that we were almost reverently silent during the meal, despite the otherwise incredibly noisy food court where we sat on our respective wobbly metal stools.
Stopping over in Chiang Mai for a few days before our plane to Europe departs from Bangkok turned out to be a smart move.
From 15–17 °C in Osaka to a heat that reminds me of a nice Swedish summer day. A pleasant 23 °C, my phone’s thermometer app informed me, is the current temperature here in northern Thailand.
My first visit to Chiang Mai was in 1988 with my old scout friend Magnus Ekström. We hiked between mountain villages for a couple of days, floated down a gently rushing river on a shaky bamboo raft for a few hours, and rode through the jungle on female elephants one afternoon. All according to my diary from that trip.
Charlotte and I were here and did roughly the same four-day trek during our honeymoon in 1998 – although that time we weren’t offered any opium.
My most recent visit to Chiang Mai was in 2019 when I attended a Qigong teacher training. Those were fairly tough weeks. I stayed in a small cabin owned to a local police officer and his kind wife.
Chiang Mai has probably doubled in size, and the number of buildings, motorcycles, and cars may very well be ten times more than during my first visit almost 40 years ago.
Yet the charm and friendliness of locals remain. You encounter them at the markets, in the alley restaurants of the old town, and in the shops along the leafy backstreets of Nimman.
The food served by the street kitchens here in the north is just as magically good as I remember it.
Tonight’s dinner was no exception – it cost SEK 35 but tasted Michelin-worthy.
Sometimes I wonder whether change actually adds anything meaningful – or if it’s just there to fuck with my brain.
Him vs Me
I saw this fellow at a simple lunch place at Osaka Station a couple of weeks ago. I’m pretty sure he was a retired “Salaryman.” It was a regular workday, and I was surrounded by a dozen or so Japanese lunch guests in various versions of black suits. Some were presenting PPT-slides, others I think were peddling sales pitches.
In the depths of Japanese urban life lives the salaryman – the eternally loyal, tired, and commuting office worker in a skinny black suit.
He is a young man who enters a company with hopes, dreams, and maybe even ambition, only to emerge many decades later as a demoralized, semi-mechanical cog in a vast corporate labyrinthine contraption. Just like in Marxism, the individual hardly matters – the collective machine does.
I’ve spent the better part of my adult life trying to avoid becoming a cog in any machine. Instead, I chose the wobbly path of freelancing, consulting, and being as creative as each assignment required of me. I’ve written, filmed, and photographed. I’ve designed, painted, and lectured. I’ve been like a multi-tool.
Where the Salaryman has routine, I’ve had improv. Where he has fixed office hours, I have… well… flexible workweeks that often extend into the weekend. Where the Salaryman has stability, I’ve lived with the existential question: “Will anyone pay me next month?”
That said, being “free” does come with some delicious perks. I’ve always had choices, and quite often I’ve been able to select and even design my own projects. And when given an assignment, I’ve enjoyed tremendous creative freedom to reach a client’s goal (and budget).
Also, if I choose to spend all of Friday morning photographing reflections in a pond or writing about salarymen in Japan, nobody stops me. I can chase ideas and inspiration wherever and whenever they appear. Like when I saw the retired Salaryman above, whom I encountered in that simple restaurant at Osaka Station. He got me to write this post. Looking at him made me reflect on how different our lives are. None is better nor worse than the other. Just different.
Leaving Japan
Kansai. Evening. In love (again).
We are now down to the very last hours of this phenomenal Japan trip – an adventure that Charlotte has researched, planned and arranged from beginning to end.
It’s Charlotte who managed the tickets for every leg by plane, train, ferry, tram, taxi, and bus. She booked all seven great hotels we’ve stayed in and kept track of every interesting place included in our shorter and longer excursions that needed to fit into various projects we’re working on.
We were actually supposed to make this Japan trip last year, but my three-month sciatica ordeal in the autumn put an abrupt stop to that.
It has followed us this autumn too – the sciatica, that is – but mostly as a quiet fellow traveller. Thankfully. I haven’t needed to take a single morphine pill on this trip.
A year later, I now realize that I simply need to learn to live with the damaged nerve and file that crap somewhere on the list of age-related ailments.
Back to Charlotte.
My wife is an exceptionally skilled travel organizer, a calm and steady guide and an irreplaceable travel companion who truly deserves to be celebrated.
Not only because of this trip, but for all the long ones we’ve been on together for almost 30 years.
When Charlotte sets her mind on a destination, she plans everything meticulously with equal parts enthusiasm and precision. You can’t pay for the kind of dedication she has.
Just this year she has arranged trips to Athens (February), Nice (April), Riga (June), Rhodes (August) and now Japan (September–December). Plus all the shorter trips to Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Had I even tried to mange all these logistics myself, I probably wouldn’t have made it farther than Borås or possibly Vänersborg. Lovely places in their own right – and two cities I actually visited on my own this year – in addition to Osaka and Hiroshima, which I headed to (with planning help from Charlotte) in January, just as soon as the aforementioned sciatica eased a little.
I sincerely hope it’s been clear just how inspired we’ve been during these six weeks in Japan. We’ve truly tried to enjoy everything we love about this country.
Sure, there have been a few squeaks along the way. The tiny Japanese hotel rooms can sometimes feel a bit claustrophobic, but after so many trips together we know the squeaks pass quickly.
The moments when we’ve laughed loud and long have been far more frequent. Having humor in a relationship gets you through just about anything and makes the relationship last longer than anything else.
Our very first trip to Asia (1997) was to India, where we, as a fairly new couple, got to experience what a few days of serious “Delhi Belly” really means. It wasn’t overly romantic, but somehow still valuable.
And now here we are, in a hotel next to Kansai International Airport (KIX) outside Osaka. Planes take off and land constantly. New travelers arrive full of expectation. Others, like us, leave filled with joy and great memories.
We’re more content than satisfied with this trip. Every time we visit Japan, we just want more. More of the great food, the beautiful design, the kindness, the nature, the architecture, all the small everyday details, the impressive logistics, the exemplary communication and the unique blend of ancient traditions and the hyper-modern.
It´s been incredibly fun to share everything that fascinated and inspired us here. Japan is truly a country you experience with all your senses.
And thanks to my partner – my tireless comrade-in-arms and skilled travel specialist Charlotte – who put together such an outstanding itinerary and arranged this tour with such finesse, I leave here with luggage full of memories that should last until our next visit to the Land of the Rising Sun.
Thank you, my love! You’re the best travel agent ever! Next time we’ll bring Elle-san.
New Book: “Abandoned – The Beauty in What Remains.”
My new book, “Abandoned – The Beauty in What Remains” has just been published on Amazon and can be ordered from Sweden here and from the US and nearby territories here.
From the new book’s introduction:
I suspect there is a psychological connection to my own abandonment issues which, at least in part, could explain my obsession with the depleted, deserted, and discarded. But mostly, I just find the natural, evolving patina of weathered textures irresistibly beautiful. There are places in this world where time has stopped mid-stride, leaving behind a silence more persuasive than any language can describe or any cryptographer decipher.
Walking into a derelict house, a closed factory, or a vacated mining town is to step into a conversation already underway – one between crumbling ceilings, rotting wood, rusty iron, and the invisible presence of lives once lived or worked there.
My travels have taken me to many such places scattered across countries and continents.
In the exclusion zone near Chernobyl in Ukraine, skeletal villages stand among the birches, where children’s toys still lie undisturbed in abruptly vacated classrooms.
In Bodie, California, once a gold-rush boomtown, sunlight cuts across deserted saloons and wooden storefronts that lean into the wind as if still listening for people who will never return.
A farmhouse in rural Sweden, a decaying warehouse in Lisbon, the remains of a 747 in bustling Bangkok, a silent hotel on the shores of the Salton Sea – I’ve documented traces of humanity that endured long after the echo of voices faded into silence. To photograph these places is to look and listen carefully, to move slowly, and to engage with places and spaces that still seem to retain a faint source of soul.
Deers at Nara Park
Yesterday was an amazing day that started with the daschound (bottom left) and ended with a tall tower (bottom right). I’ll willingly admit that I was a bit hesitant about heading out to Nara Park (奈良公園) outside of Osaka to see the bowing deer. But I don’t regret going, deer-spite my initial doubts. On contraire. The colors in the park are nothing short of deer-lightfully intense right now.
On the way back to the hotel, we were drawn to Osaka’s Eiffel-tower-inspired Tsutenkaku (通天閣), but neither of us had the energy to ride up this time – it had been a full day of deer-cisions, interesting deer-tours, and endless deer inspiration.
Aside from some inevitable street scenes over the next few days, several weeks of research for our forthcoming book project about Japan, at least a dozen travel articles (and photographs for the launch of our new design hotel website for Kyoto) have now been completed.
Back in Osaka
We’re back in Osaka, where this fantastically inspiring trip across Japan began several weeks ago. This time around, we’re staying in the Namba district, where izakayas are packed tightly along every street and alley corner.
Charlotte booked us into a nice apartment hotel, so now we finally have a glorious 50 m² (538 ft²) to spread out in. There’s even a washing machine in the apartment – although, to be fair, most of the hotels we stayed at also had one, usually tucked away in a dedicated laundry room.
There’s a big supermarket just a couple of blocks from here, where we bought breakfast. And further down the street, we found a tiny little corner bar to cap off our Thursday evening with a highball of Suntory & Soda (for relaxing times…).
Third time in Osaka. Still buzzing. Still curious. Still inspired.
Naoshima: Part Deux
Yesterday was our second day of biking on the “art island” Naoshima. This time we cycled around the entire island, stopping in a couple of small villages and sleepy fishing hamlets. Another day of beautiful weather.
There’s a really warm atmosphere on Naoshima. People we passed on the street greeted us with cheerful smiles — “ohayō gozaimasu” (good morning) or a little wave and a friendly “konnichiwa” (hi/hello).
It reminded me a bit of Vejbystrand and other small towns and islands we’ve had a connection to over the years.
Tomorrow we’re getting back on the Shinkansen. This time to Osaka, where I’m looking forward to meeting up with my buddy, photographer and “fellow wanderer” Henry Arvidsson for a night of burgers & beer. A bit farther from home than our trip to Svalbard earlier this year.
Short film: Naoshima Island
Here’s a compilation of some footage I shot yesterday on the stunningly beautiful island of Naoshima in western Japan.