The games that are featured include track and field, football, basketball, boxing, boat racing, volleyball and beach volleyball, tennis, swimming, petanque (bocce ball), shooting, sepak takraw, top spinning, crossbow, muay lao (Lao boxing), wushu, karatedo, pencak silat, taekwondo, judo, cycling, table tennis, golf, bowling and wrestling. If you haven't heard of any of these games, neither have I haha. The only one that I know of is petanque because there is a petanque court right outside our office.
Lanoy, our Country Director, was on the Laos National Basketball Team when she was about 20 years old (she is now 35), so every Lao National Games she is invited to be on the Luang Prabang Province basketball team. It is very political, because the Department that organizes the National Games is called the Department of Education and Sport. As you can probably guess, since we build public schools in Laos, this is also the department that we deal with on a day-to-day basis to get approvals, so Lanoy didn't really have a choice whether or not to play. Granted, she absolutely loves basketball so it worked out, but training also took up a lot of her time prior to the games when we were also getting into our busy season at the office.
Since Lanoy was playing, our office scheduled a trip last weekend to go watch her play. This year, the games were in Oudomxai Province, which is a 7 hour drive from Luang Prabang. If we took paved highways like we have in the States, it would have taken about 2 hours, but since the roads here are sooooooo bad (unpaved, curvy, etc), it takes more than 3 times as long. We headed out Sunday morning (December 14) for her game started at 7 pm that night. Everyone was really excited about it and 25 out of our 35 staff signed up to go! We took 1 large van that could fit 15 people, and one truck that could fit 10 people (5 inside, 5 in the truck bed). I was lucky enough to get a spot inside the truck because the roads were so dusty that everyone in the back of the trust was orange with dust by the time we got to Oudomxai.
We arrived in Oudomxai at 3:30 and we checked into the guest house. Very Lao style, we were put 3 people to a room that had 2 twin beds. The two girls I was sharing a room with, Da and Maisaa, were very polite and offered me my own bed, which I took with little hesitation. I love the people I work with, but sharing a twin bed with someone is a little too close for comfort! Da and Maisaa are also very petit ladies - I am definitely at least twice their size, so I justified it pretty quickly to myself.
As it was also Lanoy's birthday that day, we decided to wait for her and have a big celebration dinner after the game. As it got closer to 7, we walked over to the stadium and watched the end of a soccer game and men's volleyball match. 
When 7 o-clock rolled around we were at the Basketball Court, but two men's teams came on the court, not Lanoy's team! It turns out that Lanoy's team was playing at 8:30. This is all well and good, except for the fact that no one had eaten anything and now we wouldn't be eating until about 11. I was already starving at 7, so I went and got some cold fried rice at one of the vendors to hold me over. We watched the whole men's basketball game, and it was pretty pathetic to US standards. Matt and I decided that it was the equivalent of a high school JV game. We were pretty excited when it was over.
Then it was time for Lanoy's team! It was Luang Prabang vs Vientiane, which is the capital of Laos, and Lanoy had informed me that these were the two best teams playing this year so it was the biggest game of the tournament. Before leaving Luang Prabang, we had shirts made that said "Suu Suu Luang Prabang", which is a rough translation of "Lets Go Luang Prabang". When the game began everyone took off their jackets and started screaming "Suu Suu Luang Prabang!, Suu Suu Luang Prabang!" and everyone was drinking a ton of beer Lao and cheering crazily - we didn't sit down once during the whole game! Especially when Lanoy got the ball - our section was deafening.
Our cheering paid off because Luang Prabang beat Vientiane by only 3 points! This level of play was better than the men's game before theirs - more like a High School Varsity game. Lanoy also held her own by scoring many three-pointers!
Overall, it was an extremely fun trip! One funny story though - when we were on our way back there were 4 of us were squished in the back seat of the truck (fine for about an hour - but for 7!?) and we stopped at a road vendor for some snacks. Ai Keuang, who was in the back seat with us, bought a HUGE dead rat. This thing was the size of a cat. I'm getting used to many Lao things, but if this monster of an animal was sitting next to me in the truck I think I would lose it. Luckily I didn't have to say anything because it went in the truck bed with the boys, so unfortunately Matt had to deal with it.
Looking ahead to the end of the tournament, Lanoy's team won the gold!
http://www.journeyswithintravelblog.com/2012/01/11/lao-p-d-r-national-games-in-luang-prabang/
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