The Work Experience @ Vientiane, Laos

I know I don’t write much about my line of work/business and I prefer to keep it that way, after all, this site is about myself, not what I do to earn my keeps. But once in awhile, I do come across some stuff that I’d love to share even if it’s about my work.

For those that knew me, they’d have known the industry I’m in, for those that don’t know me, well, let’s just say that some think that I print money for a living. Anyway, what I’d like to share here is just a small part of my work experience while I was at Vientiane, Laos, covering the SEA Games that was held there. It was the first time this country is hosting a major sporting event, it’s my first time after a long while since I was involved in a job that spans many countries. It was truly an experience I’d remember.

The people in Vientiane and I believe in Laos as a whole is amazing. Yes, language is a major problem here if you can’t speak Lao as not many of them understand English, there are some parts where people can also converse in Mandarin as well so for those that can speak mandarin, it would help cut down some awkward hand signs when you want to buy things or ask for directions. Aside from the language barrier, the people there are wonderfully friendly. Girls are quite shy there so you get the occasional “shy smile while blushing away” look when you ask them things but once you get past that, they’ll try to assist you as much as they could. Guys on the other hand are more Gung-Ho, which is a good thing especially when we need an immediate answer. At the end of the day, you’d still get things done. Just a matter of how fast you’d get it.

Traffic in Vientiane is a sight to behold. Maybe it was due to the fact that SEA Games was on, you can spot cops everywhere along the stretch, almost 2 traffic police at every 50 metres. If you plan to drive in that city, please note that they drive on the right side of the traffic and the cars are left hand drive. Traffic lights are just a reference at most of the time as we occasionally see cars continuing on even when it was clearly a red light. On 2 occasions, we were lucky to have a police escort bringing us to the IBC, even though we are no VVIPs, it was still nice to see all the cars squeezing to the right of the road allowing us a clear path to the venue.

The International Broadcast Centre or fondly known as IBC or ICTC depending on whether you are a foreigner or a local. It isn’t massive but it does it job fairly well. The main hall was converted into a broadcast centre with rooms allocated for each country’s TV station, sadly, Malaysia didn’t send any broadcasters here. There’s the Satellite Control where all signals coming in from each venue would be processed before the signals are send out towards the countries that is showing the games Live. The MCR is also located there and that’s where I hung out most of the time irritating the staffs there with endless requests and questions. Have to truly thank them for not kicking me out of the MCR and still entertain every single requests or questions I throw at them.

Aside from the Hall, the rest of the place was segregated to accommodate Press from all the participating countries with Internet Access to allow them to update their respective Media Organization in real time. No rooms was allocated, just loads of tables with loads of chairs for them to sit around. You can roughly identify where each countries media sit around as I found the Malaysian guys and girls all sitting around one area while the media from Thailand was at another nook and this goes on for other countries as well, all except the guys from ESPN, they just sit wherever they could find space each time they enter the IBC.

We also get all the Souvenir stalls set up within the IBC along with a Money Exchange, very good way for getting us to buy stuff to remember the Vientiane Games by. I myself spend quite a few bucks buying things here too. And if you get hungry, there’s free flow of instant cup noodles and milo available towards the rear as well as proper food for sale located at the back of the building.

Of course, it’s never complete if we don’t check out the stadiums where the games were held right? Throughout the 2 weeks I was there, I’m just housed within the IBC itself where we were kept busy with feeds coming in from the stadiums and ensuring feeds are transmitted back out to where it should go. On the last day though, with some time on my hand, I decide to head over to the stadiums to check out the places, I’ve posted photos from the Tennis match, Air Pistol Finals and the Sepak Takraw finals I was able to catch and the Stadium was basically in the rush to have itself readied for the closing ceremony so nothing much was happening within it. Location wise, these places are very new, build for the sole purpose of hosting the SEA Games, hopefully, will be used in future sporting events irregardless of whether it’s local or international.

All in all, it was truly a great experience working at the games. Looking forward to the next one if I’m lucky enough.

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