On 20th April, I left my old home and my family for the final time, knowing that I was embarking on a journey of no return (the Hong Kong border is completely closed to anyone who has been in the UK in the past 21 days to prevent importing COVID variants), and I will be on my own since then. I brought 2 pieces of checked baggage because 1 was not enough. There was a lot of swimming and diving…
I made my final decision to emigrate to the UK after I swam the Cold Half this year, such that I could apply for a visa as soon as the digital application channel opened. The newly-established visa, called BN(O) visa, is a visa specifically for BN(O) citizens and their family members to emigrate to the UK as a response to the breach of Sino-British Joint Declaration. BN(O) citizens can apply for a visa for 2.5 or 5 years which is…
I took a one-way flight from Hong Kong to the UK to start a new chapter of life. Starting from this post, I will write about my emigration progress. As mentioned before, my original intention of this trip was to do a working holiday in Europe departing in winter / spring 2021, such that I can have a better environment for me to develop my orienteering skills, to become a world-class sportsman. As the working holiday was a once-of-a-lifetime chance,…
30 years ago, when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were still under Soviet occupation considered illegal by their people, people formed a chain with their hands all the way from Vilnius to Tallinn to demonstrate their unity and solidarity for the hope of independence. The images of the human chain, known as the Baltic Way, shocked the whole world. One year after that, Lithuania became free and independent, soon afterwards were Latvia and Estonia as well. The 3 countries, known as…
My trip ended with an early morning flight from Istanbul to Hong Kong the day after doing the cross-Bosphorus race on a stopover. To conclude, the objectives of my trip had all been completed, including becoming a marathon swimmer and also getting my best result in TrailO world ranking races. However, the trip was a total hassle dealing with all my planning mistakes and incompetent race organisers which were totally not helpful at all, and totally not worth the money…
It was the day for the final race of the trip. Since the race was early, the travel agency arranged with the hotel to have an early breakfast starting from 06:00, because we had to check out before 07:15 if we were not staying afterwards. We were then carried to Cemil Topuzlu Parkı for the race. We had to board 2 specifically-prepared athlete boats at Cemil Topuzlu Parkı, which carried all 2500 of us stripped down to only our swimsuits,…
This day the tour schedule was to do the compulsory race registration in the morning, which we took our race pack, containing most importantly the athlete badge, swim cap and the timing chip, and also got the wrist strap on the hand. After the registration, we got on the boat tour by the race organiser which went through the course once and explained it. We were told that we should swim towards Europe to the centre first, to find some…
This day was the last day of Fin5 competition, but I didn’t join because I was going to Istanbul to join a group tour starting on that day. That tour was a race tour by SwimTrek, an award-winning travel agency based in the U.K. doing swimming holidays tours around the world. The race was the Bosphorus intercontinental cross-harbour swimming race, which is held annually, a current assisted 6 km race from Asia to Europe. This race is the best open…
The competitions this day were middle distance, then followed by PreO in Tahkovuori. I brought my swimsuit to have some swimming before the race, but due to time constraint, I could only swim for 1 hour, about 2.5 km there. If I planned properly I could swim for 3 hours between the sprint and TempO competitions the day before as there was much time between the competitions, and there were not much walking needed to the starts. The water temperature…
The competitions moved to Tahko starting from this day. The competitions were sprint then TempO in Tahko village. I did class H21E in sprint as I am an elite competitor in sprint back in Hong Kong. However, in the competition I was burnt out after about 9 controls and started to get confused, nearly missed a control point as well. I returned at 31’25”, again the last competitor in my class, while the second last was only 23’53”, much like…