Our city is hosting half of the South East Asian Games! Amazingly, admission was FREE! So we took a school field trip. Hey, in Texas everyone is taking a State Fair Day, right? I think we are entitled to a SEA Games Day! :)
After paying the parking dude 50 cents (20 cents for parking, he said, and 30 cents for snacks and a smoke!) we headed to our first event: Sepak Takraw.
We had a friendly gun slinger escort us to the venue!
Sepak Takraw is a really cool sport. It is a mix of volleyball and hacky sack! Oh man, it was amazing to watch, like volleyball with no hands!
But first, a stop at the toilet. We felt very safe since they controlled the doping! (?)
Kris and Joel got their picture taken with the Malaysian Sepak Takraw team! This was just before Indonesia beat them! AYO! Indonesia Bisa! Later, though, we got to ride a bus with this very team, we were looking for transport and a military commando dude invited us to ride with the team! We dropped them off at their dorm and then went to our next venue (but I'm getting ahead of myself...)
Here is the gym and some of us from the group of 22 foreigners who all went together! Parts of the day WE were the main attraction!
Unfortunately, I couldn't find the right setting on my camera to capture the amazing Takraw moves. But if you Google it, you'll see how they fling their legs up over their heads to spike the ball! Here is one of Indonesia's star players. He was practicing right behind where we were sitting.
Here is part of the time we were the main attraction. That's Seth with the Ladies' Takraw Team!
And Joel with a random girl who wanted her picture with him. After awhile we were surrounded by giggly girls and couldn't even see the takraw game, so we excused ourselves, found some lunch, then headed to the next venue...
Gymnastics! Men and Women were competing in the finals. It was SO COOL! We didn't get to see all of it, but we watched them practice and we watched men's floor, vault and pommel horse and the women's uneven bars!
Here is one of Malaysia's gymnasts.
Here is one of Indonesia's gymnasts.
This is one of Indonesia's gymnasts. I took this picture especially for my gymnast niece Kayla!!
What a great day of fun! We got to see some neat stuff and still there was so much more to see! What a great opportunity to see some great competition!
