VIENTIANE (AFP) – A deafening noise fills the gymnasium as a shuttlecock player from Laos wraps up victory and a packed stand rocks with passionate support for Thailand’s sepak takraw team.

The Southeast Asian Games is a smorgasbord of different sports ranging from athletics, swimming and football to the more exotic sepak takraw and wushu –  which are passionately followed in this part of the world.

The programme of sports at the 25th SEA Games in Laos has been cut from the number in Thailand two years ago but there is still room for a huge range.

Sepak takraw, popular in Southeast Asia but little known elsewhere, is like a cross between football and volleyball, played across a net using any part of the body except the hands and arms.

A match involves two regus (teams) each made up of three players. It can also be played by teams of doubles and there is a hoop version, in which players aim to put the ball into a suspended net.

The game is traditionally played with a rattan ball, although the one being used at the SEA Games is made from synthetic materials.

Asian Sepak Takraw Federation secretary general Boonchai Lorhpipat says the sport, also on the programme of the Asian Games, whose next edition is in 2010 in Guangzhou, China, is big in this part of the world and is still growing.

‘’Football is... the one number sport for almost every country but in Thailand sepak takraw is the second most popular sport.

‘’Now we are trying to have it in the World Games in Colombia (in 2013),’’ he added.

Shuttlecock is also played on a badminton-style court and has many similarities to sepak takraw.

It is a game in which players aim to keep a weighted shuttlecock in the air using their feet and other parts of the body but not their hands or arms.

Speaking after one of her charges romped to victory in a singles match, Laos head coach Hoang Thi Thai Binh, a former player in Vietnam, said she would ‘’very much like to see the sport grow’’ in Laos.

She has been preparing the team for the SEA Games in the capital Vientiane for the past year in a country where the sport is relatively new.

“Before, the Laos people played sepak takraw and then people started playing shuttlecock,’’ she said, adding that many of the skills used in the sports were similar.

Another sport with Asian roots is wushu, a collective term to describe a number of different martial arts disciplines in which competitors use bare hands or weapons, including swords and spears.

It made its Asian Games debut in Beijing in 1990 and at the SEA Games a year later and administrators are keen to see it grow further.

Chief coach of the Malaysian team Yoong Thong Foong said China was the strongest nation, with Malaysia and Vietnam also major forces in the sport.

A wushu tournament was held in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics but Aye Cho Tu, manager of the Myanmar team, wants it to grow further.

“I would like it to become an Olympic sport,’’ he says.

The SEA Games, involving 11 nations, end on December 18.