Besides coaching the Boars, Ek worked at the local Wat Phra That Doi Wao temple, arriving after 9 am most days and leaving around 4 pm. According to Phra Kru Sajjadhamakovit, the abbot of the temple, Ek was a clean-living young man who didn’t drink or smoke, and who worked at the temple in exchange for board and a small payment. The pattern of his life, the activities into which he threw himself, spoke to the character of a person the Jesuit order would describe as a ‘man for others’, in the truest sense of the Ignatian order’s ideal.
In the years he had been coaching the Wild Boars, Ek had earned the respect and admiration of his young charges as well as their parents and senior coach Nop, who entrusted his young assistant with the boys’ welfare; in fact he had hand-picked Ek to look after the younger Boars. The trip to Tham Luang cave, at least in the planning, was no different to previous excursions on which Ek had taken his boys, aged between 11 and 17. But the team hadn’t ventured into Tham Luang before.
After some discussion, and a little nagging, Ek had agreed to the outing, posting on Facebook that the Moo Pa—the Thai name for the Wild Boars—would meet at 10 am on Saturday, 23 June, for soccer practice. Afterwards they would hop on their bikes and ride the few kilometres up dusty, broken bitumen roads, past the low-rise farmhouses and fields of fruit, to Tham Luang.
Like all kids, regardless of their culture, the boys conspired to tiptoe around the looming problem of a parental ‘no’; most of them chose not to tell their parents what they had planned, in case they were forbidden from joining their friends. The idea was to stay in the cave for about an hour. Contrary to reports at the time, there were no plans for an elaborate birthday party for Night, one of the team members, who was turning 17. They planned to be out by 5 pm, in plenty of time for Night to celebrate his birthday at home that evening with his family, team mates and other friends.
Night missed his birthday party and, more than a week later, 13-year-old Dom would miss his birthday on 3 July, too. But on that Saturday morning, 23 June, all the team members had in mind was a bit of an adventure after a couple of hours of soccer practice. They wanted to see the cave, to explore. According to Belgian-born, Thai-based diver Ben Reymenants, it was a local tradition for young boys to venture deep inside the cave and write their names on the walls.
What could possibly go wrong?
In fact, two team members didn’t join them on the journey into the cave. Thaweechai Nameng, 13, had obeyed his parents and returned home after practice to finish his homework. Songpol Kanthawong, also 13, didn’t want to explore the cave; he didn’t ride his bike to practice that day, and was picked up by one of his parents afterwards. It was a fateful decision that, hours later, when the alarm was first raised at 6 pm, would lead to the discovery of a crucial piece of information.
Coach Ek isn’t the only stateless member of the Wild Boars soccer team. Three of the boys—Adul Sam-on, 14; Pornchai ‘Tee’ Kamluang, 16; and Mongkol ‘Mark’ Boonpiam, 13—are caught in a similar legal limbo. It is not uncommon. The UN High Commission for Refugees has estimated there are as many as 480,000 stateless people living in Thailand.
While the distance between the town of Mae Sai, Thailand, and Tachileik, Myanmar—separated by a river with two border crossings, and which can be waded by the adventurous—can be measured in only metres, the cultural gap between these two neighbouring countries is great. For all its recent history of coups and political instability, Thailand is a relatively prosperous country compared to Myanmar: about 35 million tourists visit the country each year, its manufacturing and services sectors are growing, and the average annual wage is around 165,000 baht.3 It may not sound like much by Western standards, but when the cost of living is very low, it is enough.
Myanmar, in comparison, relies heavily on agriculture to drive its economy. The repressive military junta still appoints a quarter of the parliament despite all the ‘progress’ towards democracy; journalists are arrested for doing their jobs; and Myanmar has an appalling history of mistreating the ethnic Rohingya Muslim minority who live near its border with Bangladesh. In August 2018 the United Nations accused the Myanmar military of committing genocide the previous year.
In other words, Myanmar’s quality of living is years behind Thailand’s. And even though daily staples are even cheaper in Myanmar, Thais earn on average about three times as much as their neighbours. About a quarter of Myanmar’s citizens live below the poverty line, compared to about 7 per cent of Thais.
The people of Mae Sai are nowhere near as rich as the political and economic elite in Bangkok but, unlike their near neighbours in Tachileik, they have access to opportunity and affluence.
Neither Thailand nor Myanmar offers citizenship by birth, but the porous border has allowed people like the four stateless Wild Boars to seek opportunities, such as a better education, in Thailand.
Adul Sam-on is a classic case in point. The only Christian member of the team, Adul was born in Myanmar, but when he was 6 his family slipped him across the border so he could attend the local Ban Wiang Phan school in Mae Sai. Soon after arriving in Thailand, the now eighth-grader was taken into the care of the Mae Sai Grace church and he has since excelled in the classroom and on the sporting field, winning friends along the way.
The Mae Sai Grace church, situated in a back street off the Phahonyothin Road that runs into the centre of town, is dirt poor. It’s not much more than a handful of buildings, including the church and a separate building that offers humble accommodation. White paint peels off the walls, ageing play equipment sits in the front yard and chickens roam around free.
Adul speaks Thai, Burmese, English, Chinese and Wa—the language of the ethnic tribal group from which he is descended; these language skills would prove invaluable to the Boars in the days to come.
As with Ek and Adul, Mark and Tee’s statelessness didn’t matter to the other Wild Boars; they would enter the Tham Luang cave as a team. Their families would suffer in the same way while, for eighteen days, the world watched, waited and hoped.
23 JUNE: INSIDE
A rising sense of dread
The entrance to Tham Luang cave bristles with promise for young explorers seeking adventure. Outside the signs highlight points of interest, with some of the chambers given evocative names such as ‘Hidden City’, ‘Maze City’, ‘Stalactite Cave’ and ‘the Planetarium’. The lure of secret caves—spectacular caverns with stalactites hanging low from the ceiling and stalagmites pushing up from the floor—can be difficult to resist, in spite of the warning sign at the entrance. Inside, more than 10 kilometres of tunnels, the only section of the cave that has been explored, beckon; its full extent is not known. Cave surveys can be like treasure maps, with sections marked simply ‘unexplored’, luring cavers with a lust to explore the unknown.
If anything, the prospect of a little danger was a magnet that drew the Wild Boars into Tham Luang rather than scared them away. The dark caverns, slippery rocks, pinch points and wide open chambers offered an other-worldly experience, an adventure free of the expectations of their school teachers and parents.
When the Wild Boars arrived at the entrance that Saturday afternoon, they parked their bikes against a railing. A little further in, they set aside their shoes and backpacks, which would later be found by the rescue workers frantically searching for them.
Coach Ek thought he had come prepared. He had ventured into the cave before, along with two members of his team, so this time he had packed a rope, a torch and some spare batteries to help guide the boys deep inside the network of tunnels and caverns.
The further you travel into Tham Luang, the harder it is to cope with the dark. As the 35-year-old Canadian diver Erik Brown, who would spend days deep inside the cave during the rescue effort, put it: ‘When people are afraid of the dark, inside a cave is the darkest place on the planet. You don’t want to be there. You are 3 kilometres from light. There is just zero light, there is nothing.’
And there are other dangers arising from sensory dep
rivation. The further in you go, the harder it is to hear anything outside. Later the boys would say they thought they had heard chickens, dogs barking and helicopters from their vantage point deep inside the cave. But it’s not clear how this was possible, given the team was hundreds of metres beneath the surface.
But Adul would later say that hearing those noises ‘boosted our morale a lot. It gave us hope that there were someone searching for us.’
And Ek said: ‘When I heard the noise on the first night, I was sure that someone would come and help us. I told the kids that we had to survive until someone found us. It was only a matter of time. Personally, I didn’t think it’d take too long—I only thought it would be about three days.’
With hindsight, the decision not to take food and water with them looks like an obvious mistake but, at the time, the group had not expected to be in the cave for more than an hour—their parents wouldn’t even notice they had gone.
Those first steps into the cave went smoothly enough for the Boars. When it’s dry, the 1-kilometre walk from the cave entrance to what the rescue teams later dubbed chamber 3 is smooth enough, although diver Brown says there are some ‘gnarly bits’. As you walk in from the outside world, you encounter one of those sections just before the entrance to chamber 3. Danish diver Ivan Karadzic, who would later work alongside Brown and play a key role in the rescue, says there is ‘a small restriction’ there. Days after the boys entered the system—well after the rain had hit—that section of the cave became fully submerged; to enter chamber 3, you had to dive about 5 metres through a sump, a section of a cave that is underwater.
On that Saturday afternoon, as the boys walked deeper and deeper into Tham Luang, searching for hidden cities and adventure, that choke point was clear. But a little more than an hour later, all that would change, with potentially tragic consequences.
Deeper and deeper into the cave they went, making their way through pinch points so narrow they could be measured in just centimetres, and then on through the caverns. At certain points the ceilings of the warren of caves and passages are less than a metre high; at others, they can be as high as 10 metres.
Perhaps they felt like Frodo Baggins in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, making their way through the goblin caves of the Misty Mountain. Some, like 11-year-old Chanin ‘Titan’ Vibulrungruang and 13-year-old Somepong ‘Pong’ Jaiwong, would later remember that they were more than a little scared about their journey into the cave, but the promise of adventure conquered their fear and drew them in.
Outside, the monsoon rains began to fall …
Unless you’ve experienced a monsoonal downpour in the open air, it’s hard to understand just how ferocious it can be. First, it’s the air you breathe—one minute it’s sticky and hot and the mercury is hovering somewhere above 30°C, the next the air you suck into your lungs becomes a little cooler and more comfortable; in fact it’s quite refreshing, but that sensation doesn’t last long.
Then you notice that everything is turning grey as clouds gather rapidly overhead. That can happen quickly—in five or ten minutes. Then it’s as if, high above, a switch has been flicked. The first few drops, slow and heavy, land on your head, tickling your arm and splattering on the ground.
But a minute later the laden clouds dump thick, heavy globules of water all over you as the rain thumps into the ground. Everything is soaked in an instant. The rain can seem inexhaustible, beating down beyond all rhyme and reason for hours at a time.
But deep inside Tham Luang on Saturday, 23 June, the Wild Boars missed Mother Nature’s warning signs. They saw, heard and felt nothing. And although they didn’t know it yet, they were already trapped inside the cave.
Once the monsoonal rain started, water began pouring into the cave from nearby streams close to the entrance, and through barely perceptible cracks and crevices hundreds of metres above them.
As the boys made their way into the cave, they encountered some water at a difficult to traverse T-junction, known as Sam Yaek, which sits further into the cave, about 750 metres past chamber 3. If they had turned right, the boys would have headed towards Monk’s Series, where searchers would later attempt to drill down into the cave, but water was already entering the cave from that direction, blocking their way. Instead, they turned left and headed towards a spot locals have nicknamed Pattaya Beach, after a Thai resort town more than 1000 kilometres south. Ek wasn’t concerned about the water at the T-junction, as there had been some water there when he had last visited the cave.
It would turn out to be a monumental mistake.
The boys kept hiking deeper into the cave, past Pattaya Beach towards Nern Nom Sao, another point that offered high ground. Time was getting away from them, as tends to happen when boys go exploring. Ek reminded the boys that they could spend no more than an hour exploring the cave, and then they would have to head straight out, as Night had to be home for his birthday and Titan had an appointment with a tutor at home at 5 pm that afternoon.
They still didn’t realise the danger they were in.
When they reached Nern Nom Sao, the boys stopped again to discuss whether they should keep going deeper into the cave.
They pressed on.
It wasn’t until they were well past Nern Nom Sao—the place that would become their home for more than two weeks—that the boys realised they were out of time. As Ek recalled, ‘When we were trying to come out, we were beyond Nern Nom Sao … I’m not sure what the place’s name is, but we found out it is called Muang Lab Lae.’ The literal translation of Muang Lab Lae is ‘underwater world’.
Tee had volunteered to be a scout and had swum ahead through a watery section, and reassured the boys it was safe to proceed.
As Tee swam in the direction of Muang Lab Lae, he reassured the group the water wasn’t deep. The older boys offered the younger, smaller members of the group piggybacks—all of them could swim, contrary to what had been reported when the boys were trapped, but not all were good swimmers.
But then Ek checked his watch on their way across, and realised the time. The hour inside the cave had passed quickly, and it was time to turn back and head out. The boys agreed they would come back and explore the cave another time. But as they began the trek back through the caverns and tunnels of Tham Luang cave, the water levels deep inside the Mountain of the Sleeping Lady were rising. Only now, as they made their way towards the entrance, did the Boars begin to realise how much trouble they might be in.
As they arrived at the T-junction, 14-year-old Ekarat ‘Bew’ Wongsukchan let out a shout: ‘The way out is blocked!’
‘Are we lost?’ another boy asked.
Panic was now beginning to set in among some of the younger members of the team. They were still more than a kilometre from the cave entrance—they hadn’t even reached chamber 3 yet—and the floodwaters were rising around them. Mark worried they wouldn’t get out and that his mother would scold him for being home late. Ek reassured his young charges they weren’t lost, because at that point there was only one way in and out of the cave.
Increasingly wary of the dangers that might lie ahead, the coach gathered some of the older boys—Tee, Adul and Night—and told them he had a plan. Carefully unfurling the rope he had brought with him, Ek explained he would swim ahead and try to assess the conditions. He told the trio to hold tight onto the rope: two yanks on the rope meant danger ahead and they were to pull him back to safety; however, if the rope remained slack, that meant he had managed to swim through the choke point, and the other boys would be able to follow him.
Ek then lowered himself into the water and started swimming but it was, as he later recalled, ‘all sand and rock … I wasn’t able to do anything more.’ He couldn’t make any headway through the rising waters.
With a heavy heart he pulled twice on the rope and his three young charges helped him back to shore. ‘I told them we could not go home; we will have to find another way out.’
They were trapped.
The team frantically started
digging as Ek thought it might reduce the water levels at the T-junction, but it made no difference. An hour later, as 6 pm came and went and the boys began to tire, Tee turned to Ek and said plainly the team needed to find a place to sleep for the night. The boys had no food, no water and no spare clothes; they were wet, and a long night in the cave with no dinner stretched ahead of them.
So the Boars turned and headed back inside the cave, seeking higher ground about 200 metres past the T-junction as the waters around them began to rise. Here water dripped from the ceiling, and Ek told them it was safer to be near a water source. The young coach thought the rising water in the cave was temporary, caused by a little early rain, and they could go home the next morning. How wrong he was.
Thankfully, in those crucial first hours after the team became trapped, Ek realised fear could be one of the biggest dangers facing the boys. So before they went to sleep, the former Buddhist monk guided them in prayers he had spent years reciting in the local monastery. He wasn’t scared, or at least he didn’t let on that he was; he composed himself. As he would later recount to a journalist, ‘I did not tell them that we were stuck in the cave. I just told them in a positive way, like, just wait for a while, the water may decrease and then we can get out. I tried not to freak them out. If I had told them that we were stuck in the cave they would have freaked out.’1
Time slows down in the dark. As the hours tick by, it becomes harder and harder to keep track of day and night. Tee would regularly check his watch, providing the team with updates and trying to provide the Boars with an anchor point in time as the dark settled around them.
Outside, although they didn’t know it, the rains continued to beat down. Inside, illuminated by the torch light they were carefully conserving, the water levels continued to rise, and the boys were forced to seek out higher ground. Soon enough they found themselves retracing their steps, heading past Pattaya Beach to Nern Nom Sao, further into the cave complex and further away from help.
The Great Cave Rescue Page 2