The Straits Times ( Singapore )

 SEA Games: After 44 years, 

Games return to Myanmar in dazzling opening ceremony

Fireworks explode over the opening ceremony of the 27th SEA Games in Naypyitaw, Myanmar on Wednesday, Dec 11, 2013. -- PHOTO: AP

By Chia Han Keong In Naypyidaw

THE SEA Games returned to Myanmar on Wednesday after a 44-year wait, as Naypyidaw celebrated with an Opening Ceremony filled with impressive visual effects and joyous emotions.
More than 6,000 athletes and officials strode into the spanking-new Wunna Theikdi Stadium with huge smiles, parading in front of Myanmar president Thein Sein.
Myanmar's vice-premier Nyan Tun declared the Games open, the first it has hosted a sports event of such scale since 1969, when the Games was still known as the South-east Asian Peninsular Games.
And when the host nation's archer Maung Wai Lin Tun, receiving the beacon from the last torch relay runner, lit the Games cauldron by shooting an arrow into it, the entire stadium erupted as it kick-started the 12-day sports extravaganza
(http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/sea-games-2013/story/sea-games-after-44-years-games-return-myanmar-dazzling-opening-ce)