ORIEN.ASIA | Orienteering in Asia | Orientering i Asien -

3-day orienteering fun in Singapore, and more

Posted on 19 June, 201919 June, 2019

Advertisements

Singapore held its second Orienteering League just this weekend from 14 to 16 June, attended by 40–50 orienteers.

The three days include a night sprint in Tiong Bahru Park, a score-O in Kovan, and a final sprint in Woodlands.

Singapore Orienteering Leagues normally last for three days over a weekend. Due to the lack of large runnable forests, Singaporean events consist mainly of sprint orienteering. However, given Singapore is famous for being a Garden City, it also means a lot of nice, fun venues for sprints too!

Advertisements

The next Singapore Orienteering League will be from 12 to 14 July.

More orienteering events in Asia the past weekend:

Advertisements

Micro Orienteering in Taiwan

iTaiwan organised a day of orienteering experience for orienteers and newcomers. Besides micro orienteering, there is also a compass teaching session.

Advertisements

Meanwhile in Hong Kong… sprints, sprints, more sprints!

Sprint orienteering events are blossoming like never in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was one of the earliest places in Asia to have orienteering (despite Japan and South Korea becoming IOF members earlier than Hong Kong). Blessed (from an outdoor lover’s point of view) with a rugged terrain, but with vegetation so dense that maps tend to be mostly green, Hong Kong orienteers have turned to sprints as a way to get the sport forward in the metropolis.

Dozens of sprint events await this year. Y2Y held the third of their sprint events (and Hong Kong ranking event) this year in Mui Wo, among a series of ten:

Pro-Active Orienteering Club (established in recent years) will kick off their series of four events from July:

Advertisements

… and Metropolitan Orienteering Club (MetOC) with the sprint knockout in Tai Po on 7 July:

There are so many events in Hong Kong in 2019, such that there is, on average, one event per week for the remainder of this year. And that’s not yet counting the Historical Road Orienteering events and the World Cup Finals in adjacent Guangdong.

Advertisements

China (mainland)

It’s summer time—now some summer events

Posted on 3 June, 20192 June, 2019

Advertisements

It’s June, and Midsummer is fast approaching. Summer in Sweden is cheerful matter—but no laughing matter in East Asia—think of an open-air sauna!

Still, it’s not going to deter Asian orienteers from having summer fun. Here we go with some summer events that recently happened!

Advertisements

1. The many China event maps on ORoute

Xian Chengbin wrote the race evaluation app ORoute—basically a mobile version of QuickRoute—and posted a lot of maps on the ORoute Facebook page! A lot of the maps show just how wonderful the terrain is in China—although he seldom posts photos on that page—but seriously you all need to go in and follow the page!

Advertisements

2. Korea competitions, late May

South Korea is not usually a popular place for international orienteers to go to, since there was usually little English information released. However, they have now improved by releasing a race calendar in English.

Moreover, the Asian Orienteering Championships (AsOC) are going to be in South Korea next year. This means the competitions late in May were attended by quite many international orienteers, among them Hongkongers.

3. Sprint competition in Taiwan

Summer means sprint orienteering in Sweden, and it’s true in Taiwan as well. Like Hong Kong, Taiwan’s orienteering scene is blossoming with many organisations and events, such as TWOA (not to be confused with the federation CTOA) and Moxina. Here, a sprint competition in Taipei just today (2 June):

Advertisements

SHARE to 10 people if you like this article!

Advertisements

Asia

To Asia with trains (overland part 2)

Posted on 29 May, 201928 May, 2019

Advertisements

With all the climate talk you actually don’t need to be “flight-shamed” even if you travel to Asia—it’s possible to travel to Asia without flying. It’s possible with freighter ships but trains are the most practical.

How you can take trains to Asia. NOTE! The number of days shown assume that all trains, buses and ferries leave and arrive on time.

Seat61.com gives a lot of information on how to do that. For example you can travel from Stockholm to Hong Kong in 9 days. That’s not counting the departure day from Stockholm as one day. And not staying overnight in Moscow and Beijing as the “man in seat 61” advises.

Day 0-1: ferry to Helsinki, 1 night
Day 1-2: RZD train “Tolstoi” to Moscow, 1 night
Day 2-8: train to Beijing (via the Trans-Siberian Railway and Mongolia, 6 nights)
Day 8-9: high speed train (with beds!) to Guangzhou, 1 night
Day 9: train to Hong Kong. You’ve arrived! NOTE! There’s a direct high speed train from Beijing to Hong Kong every day, but you won’t arrive until evening on Day 9.

It’s not so easy to book the Moscow-Beijing-train (you should find a travel agency like kilroy.se, very expensive ~12000kr, or Google for any website that sells tickets). For the rest of the trains and ferries, it’s very easy to book online (for Helsinki-Moscow, rzd-online.ru; for trains in China, trip.com).

Advertisements

I took the trip one day in the opposite direction (Hong Kong to Sweden). I must say it feels very strange to stay on the same train for a week! If you have a month or more, you might want to make stopovers in Russia, Mongolia and China (taking local slow trains on the way).