Geneva is a metropolitan city which is the home of many international organisations, among them the most famous ones are the UN and Red Cross which we can visit. Therefore I planned to visit both, just next to each other, on the day. However because of the baggage and accommodation trouble the day before, I visited the Red Cross and Red Crescent museum first, then took a bus to the airport to get back my baggage, returned to the city…
My trip started on 2019-07-10, leaving Hong Kong by taking flights SU 213 to Moscow Sheremetyevo and transferring to SU 2382 to Geneva. I tried to pack to a carry-on only but failed to do that, because I wanted to bring my laptop in the trip and it contributed a lot to the weight, so I ended up having a 45 L backpack as checked luggage, taking the risk of baggage misconnect. (Aeroflot is notorious of baggage misconnect especially in…
When the event calendar of TrailO world ranking events was published last year, I started planning the events and trips that I would go this year. One of the events that I would definitely go was FinTrailO, as I had good experience participating in the 2018 event, and this year there were 3 instead of 2 world ranking races, also I grabbed a cheap air ticket well before. However, doing 3 in a year was not enough, as the best…
In November 2018, I discovered that there will be a cross-harbour race in Istanbul in July, in the weekend after Fin5 orienteering races which includes 2 WRE competitions. I signed up through a travel agency which I intended to be my first overseas swimming race in my life and do Fin5 before that. At that time, I had just started swim squad training for a month and the longest swimming race I had done was MMIC 3.7 km. I signed…
When I was in secondary school, I needed to do book reports as homework in the English subject. In a particular week, when I was browsing the book shelf in the library, I was attracted by the title “Swimming To Antarctica”, as common sense dictated that Antarctica is icy and it shouldn’t be possible to swim in it, then borrowed that book, read it and did my book report. At that time, I was not a swimmer – although I…
I visited 5 cities in this trip, Stockholm on the west, then Porvoo on the east, then Tampere on the north, then Tallinn on the south, with Helsinki as the centre. I did 5 orienteering competitions in total, with 4 of them having WRE status. However, I got the last place in both FootO competitions in Sweden, in both middle distance and sprint distance. My places in the 3 FinTrailO competitions weren’t good too, not reaching the median in all…
On the last day of my trip, I took a day trip across the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn. I took the M/S Finlandia, Eckerö Line cruise-ferry between Helsinki and Tallinn. That day was a sunny day like my initial days in Stockholm and I couldn’t resist my temptation to go swimming in 5°C water at the long Pirita Beach. That beach is a long sandy beach, typical of the beaches in Baltic countries, with blue flag certification but it…
After FinTrailO day 2 in Tampere, I went to a sauna. I had read from tourist websites that people normally use sauna in combination with swimming, for example, swim – sauna, or sauna – swim, or even alternate between them. After I changed my clothes, I first went swimming for about 28 minutes. The lake temperature was 5°C at that time. Afterwards, I entered the sauna. However, not long after I entered the sauna, people thought that I was in…
On 4/5, day 5 of my trip, I went to Porvoo for doing FinTrailO. TempO and PreO were held in that day. However, the terrain was too difficult for me, mainly rock and cliff hidden in forest. I scored 790 seconds for 30 controls in TempO, where the winning time was only 237 seconds, and 15 out of 28 in PreO. It was snowing in May! However, the preceding days in the end of April were very warm, like in…
I did my second orienteering competition, Swedish League in this trip on day 4 of my trip, 3rd May. It was a sprint competition with world ranking status. It was the highest level competition in Sweden. The competition was held in Fisksätra with a typical suburban setting, running between low density residences. My friend Raphael, living in Gothenburg, was there as well. However, even I was a so called elite in sprint orienteering in Hong Kong, I got another last…