We made the short (for laos) five-hour hop to the capital just in time for the start of Pii Mai: laos New Year. This officially three-day long festival of the lunar New Year is celebrated with a week-long, countrywide water fight. We armed ourselves with water pistols and got thoroughly soaked. Everyone in Vientiane had taken to the streets, either stationed by tanks of water and hoses soaking passersby or in the back of pick-up trucks armed with water balloons and getting soaked as they drove by. The whole thing is extremely good-natured and involves everyone - we saw groups of men in their seventies in natty hats chasing each other with water pistols.

The festival marks the start of a New Year, and to signify this Lao people literally wash everything clean. Buddha images are washed and blessed with purified water, houses are cleaned from top to bottom and then everyone dresses up in their best new clothes and goes out to bless friends and neighbour with water too. Lots of it. We found a friendly group of locals who let us share their hose, and their beer (about twenty full buckets of water over my head was a small price to pay) and threw ourselves into it (literally for me: wet floors are slippy). Chris's particular favourite was to get otherwise dry people in the ear, or through the slightly open windows of passing cars. I especially enjoyed aiming under the helmets of people on motorbikes. Not that we got carried away or anything...

We also found time to visit Pha That Luang the most famous and beautiful temple in laos, where we got to see the purification of the Buddhas, and to take in the rather lovely city itself. As well as squeezing in a few games of very retro-style ten-pin bowling, which is huge in laos. Chris played well, whilst I was a little more erratic - in three games I managed two strikes, and about twenty zeroes. I think I'll stick to water fights.

Labels: Laos, Vientiane

THAILAND - The next host for SEA Games in 2009, Laos, has announced that only 25 sports will be held in the upcoming SEA Games
Hosting for their first time, Laos lack the infrastructure and timespan to build facilities thus the drop of many sports such as equestrian, gymnastics, dance sport, cycling, basketball, fencing, softball, chess all water sports and softball
The only sport that will be contested is traditional boat race, wrestling, wushu, karate-do, muay, petanque, sepak takraw, shooting, football/futsal, golf, handball, judo, pencak silat, shuttle cock, snooker and billiards, archery, athletics, badminton, bowling, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, aquatics, boxing and volleyball/beach volleyball
The next date for 25th SEA Games is tentatively set at December 13-21 in Vientiane, Laos. The main area of focus will be at Luangprabang and Champasak
Currently in plan is a $46-million main stadium, $6 million training facility and a new hotel to house an expected figure of 2,500 athletes
With the sudden drop of sports with the announcement by Dr. Phauthong Seng-Akhon, president of the Laos Olympic Committee, Thailand has offered to host and play some games near the Thai-Laotian border so as to accomodate the axed dropped sports

Labels: 25 th Seagames, Laos, Laos Games, SEA Games 2009

The 15th Southeast Asian games were held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 20 August - 31 August 1989. It was officially opened by 9th Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Azlan Shah. Although Cambodia did not participate, Laos returned to compete for the first time under the new federation name in this edition of the games. A unified Vietnam first participated in the SEA games in 1989 as well।

Position	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Indonesia	102	78	71	251
2	Malaysia	67	58	75	200
3	Thailand	62	63	66	191
4	Singapore	32	38	47	117
5	Philippines	26	37	64	127
6	Myanmar	10	14	20	44
7	Vietnam	3	11	5	19
8	Brunei	1	2	24	27
9	Laos	0	1	0	1

Labels: Bronze, Brunei, Laos, Silver, Vietnam