Jum translated parts and I gained a glimpse of the complicated situation into which these families had been thrust. Politics, greed and opportunities surrounded them, and they discussed how to pick a path through the madness. They talked about the supernatural elements of the story. They were clearly exhausted, but happy. Over and over, we all clinked glasses.
‘Have you ever tried ducks’ beaks?’ Sak asked me.
I had to check the translation a couple of times, thinking back through my exotic eating list.
‘No, definitely not,’ I said.
‘Would you like to?’
I had a feeling I was being tested.
‘Sure,’ I said.
Soon, a plate of deep-fried morsels arrived and we tucked in. I watched for the technique: hold the beak and nibble the meat from around the head. They were surprisingly good; like tiny battered drumsticks. We ordered another plate.
As the place began to fill up, a talented female singer took to the stage, her pure voice accompanied by a man on an electric keyboard.
‘Can you sing?’ asked Sak.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said, again feeling a test.
He gestured to the stage. Yikes.
‘Hmm, I don’t know. If I had a guitar I could,’ I said, hoping to squirm off on a technicality.
The owner, who’d been sitting with us, got up and returned a few minutes later with an acoustic guitar. Damn, now I couldn’t back out. My repertoire consisted mostly of downbeat Americana and obscure Australian songs. Not for the first time, I cursed myself for not learning ‘Hotel California’.
Soon I found myself on stage. Black-and-white pictures of Elvis and an old Thai crooner covered the wall behind me. Instead of a seat, there was a retro-style motorcycle to sit on. I introduced myself in my limited Thai and began playing a ballad by Little Feat, ‘Roll Um Easy’. The patrons stopped and listened, no doubt for the novelty rather than the talent. When the song was finished, there was mild applause. I played one more song – The Lucksmiths’ ‘Frisbee’ – said thank you, wai’d the crowd and beat a hasty exit, stage left.
I slipped back to the table to a round of ‘cheers’. Had I passed the test? It was hard to tell. The conversation continued and the adrenaline rush of an impromptu performance subsided. After more snacks and beers, we told the fathers we would leave them be; no doubt they had things to discuss privately. They said to stick around; they’d be leaving soon anyway.
As we walked out to the car park, a soft drizzle fell. Sak said we should come and meet his son. We declined, conscious of our efforts to not intrude.
‘Just for five minutes,’ he said.
We didn’t refuse a second time and convoyed back to the house.
We met Biw and sat around on woven mats while he told the family some of his incredible story. We let his family ask most of the questions. As per our agreement, I didn’t report any of the details Biw shared. Much later, Sak gave his permission to reveal the meeting for this book.
* * *
After the rescue and the public press conference, access to the Wild Boars was highly restricted. The boys’ families were told by the Thai government not to talk to any media and to entrust the authorities to manage all requests.
Around mid-August, a rumour spread that the Thai government was planning a secret interview session with the Wild Boars, specially arranged for the American Broadcasting Company. It didn’t make sense – a few weeks earlier, the Thai government had been talking about charging the American Broadcasting Company and others for violating the Child Protection Act. Now they were rolling out the red carpet for them. What had changed?
The question was not what had changed, but who. In August, the government’s deputy spokesman Major-General Werachon Sukondhapatipak was appointed the head of the Creative Media for Tham Luang Cave Committee.
I raced to the airport to fly to Chiang Rai. If there was a genuine media opportunity, I wanted to be there. And if it was a dodgy deal, I wanted to see that too. As I pulled up to the departure gate, Major-General Werachon called me back.
I asked him if he had arranged a deal with the American Broadcasting Company.
‘There is a committee to consider the proposal,’ he replied. ‘It is government policy, first to protect the children, second, we need to know the storyboard, third we need to know all of the questions, all of this will be considered. But I cannot tell if it has been granted or not.’
‘But will there be a secret press conference for the American Broadcasting Company?’
‘I cannot say for sure,’ was the deputy spokesman’s response.
(I would later find out that a full TV crew had flown from America and, as we were having this conversation, they were unpacking three vans of lights, tripods and cameras at a temple in Mae Sai, the same one that Coach Ek spent his years as a monk.)
The monks at the temple, just like the families, were expected to comply with the government’s wishes. At least one of the families had called the abbot to see if they could decline to participate. The abbot, realistic of the power play involved, said not really.
The main prayer hall had been rigged with lights and cameras, and the American TV crew was waiting in a room inside the building. The public was forbidden to enter the room to pray; a dark-red velvet curtain had been pulled across the front glass doors. At least five police officers and eight soldiers stood guard, and did laps of the hillside pagoda on motorbikes.
At 5 pm on the dot, two silver vans drove into the temple grounds and pulled up outside the main hall. Some adults got out of the first one and it pulled away. The second van inched forward, the door slid open, and a blur of yellow shirts popped out, as the Wild Boars ran out of the van door and into the prayer hall, much like soccer players running out of the tunnel and onto the field.
The families of the boys were surprised to find foreigners inside the temple – they had been told the interview was for the Thai government program Moving Forward Thailand, hosted by none other than Major-General Werachon. But that was a ruse.
A female producer from the American Broadcasting Company got out of the passenger door and walked toward the velvet curtains, raising her clenched fists in the air and then hugging a Thai fixer. They’d done it. For the second time, they had got the exclusive interview. Once again, they’d hunted down the Wild Boars.
The group interview ran the following morning on their high-rating breakfast show. It looked fantastic, with soft golden lighting illuminating a Buddha statue and a portrait of the King in the background. Multiple cameras covered different angles. The content was almost exactly the same as the previous public press conference, which made sense considering the questions had again been vetted.
The psychologists had agreed to a 45-minute interview. But in the end, the filming took more than four hours, albeit with breaks. The families left late in the evening, tired and angry. The boys had smiled and laughed good naturedly through it, but had been bored.
Major-General Werachon’s fuzziness on the phone that morning about whether there was an interview or not had apparently cleared up as the day went on. He personally escorted the TV crew to the provincial government meeting and later translated correspondent James Longman’s questions during the taping. A photo posted on social media showed the boys, their coach and the TV crew. On the edge stood Major-General Werachon, his arm around one of the boys. (Major-General Werachon ignored requests to be interviewed for this book.)
‘The interview caused an uproar among local and foreign media which felt the Thai government granted special privilege to the American TV while discouraging others from talking to the thirteen Tham Luang survivors,’ wrote the state broadcaster Thai PBS a few days later.
Werachon put the whole thing down to a ‘communication misunderstanding’.
‘He also dismissed a suggestion that ABC [American Broadcasting Company] News had paid for the right to interview the boys and their coach,’ stated the Thai PBS article. (The American Broadcasting Company also
denied paying money to secure the interview.) ‘Some parents doubted why their boys were interviewed because they were informed that it would be only an informal talk between an ABC News reporter and the boys.’
* * *
Unfortunately, that was not the only ethically questionable incident involving those who were supposed to be protecting the Wild Boars.
On 7 September, Erik and Mikko went to a fancy Bangkok shopping mall and stood at the edge of the crowd, waiting like everyone else for the boys and Coach Ek to appear on stage. Even though they had helped rescue the boys, they had never actually met them. For those three urgent days, the boys were simply ‘packages’, precious blurs of wetsuits and face masks and bubbles. The Koh Tao divers were heroes, but here they were fan-boying like the rest of us in the audience.
The boys sat on two rows of high stools, Titan and Mark in the front for maximum cuteness. To the right of the stage, Coach Ek sat cross-legged, his fresh orange robes almost neon against the black leather chair.
A Q&A got underway, hosted by Major-General Werachon. There was the sense we were being given a very limited glimpse into a private world. The same pre-screened questions received more or less the same answers as the Mae Sai press conference and the American Broadcasting Company interview. Being teenagers, they couldn’t always hide their boredom, and on this day, four of them in the back row occasionally whispered to each other from the corners of their mouths and stifled giggles.
They took turns answering. What food did they crave? What did they want to be when they grew up? By now, they had it by rote. Adul was still the designated spokesman, but his voice was becoming raspy. The connection between the boys and Coach Ek was immediately apparent; warm and respectful.
The Q&A ended and the team was led to a nearby display, created by the government to tell the story of the cave rescue. It was excellent, explaining the equipment and techniques used to pull off the daring mission. (Rather strangely though, an information plaque about Tham Luang described it as representing the ‘vagina’ of the mythical Princess Nang Non in the folk story. Which was odd, as it was located about where her left ear should have been.) There was a full-face mask and one of the army-green rescue stretchers on which the boys had been carefully ferried through the cave. Visitors could sip tiny plastic cups of the energy gel the boys had first been given. A surprise crowd favourite was the foil space blankets, with kids eager to wrap themselves up and have their photo taken on a fake rock.
The centrepiece was a room-sized replica of a cave. As the Wild Boars toured the display, their minders forgot all about protecting the boys’ mental wellbeing. They were ushered into the ‘cave’, crouching to fit into the small space and duck-walking through the darkness, as TV cameras jostled for a shot. If there was ever a trigger for PTSD, it was this – and they’d just been guided into it by the government.
The country’s top mental health specialist said luckily the stunt didn’t seem to affect the boys but was still wildly inappropriate.
‘They are not dolls that anyone can do whatever they want [to],’ said Dr Yongyuth Wongpiromsan, head of Thailand’s Department of Mental Health, according to BBC Thai.
Adul was asked about this incident at a later public event. After a moment of coaching, he said they had wanted to go in. Privately, however, several of the boys told me the opposite – they had not wanted to go inside that fake cave and they did not enjoy the experience.
28
Controversy
IN THE LATTER STAGES of the rescue, billionaire technology guru Elon Musk offered to help. Best known for his eco-cars, the inventor was also trying to pioneer commercial space travel through his company SpaceX. The Thai public was enthralled that Musk was getting involved, imagining a dramatic space-age solution to their problem.
At Musk’s order, a group of his SpaceX engineers went to work on two ideas. One was a mini-submarine, or pod, that the boys could lie inside. The other was an inflatable tube that they could walk through.
The engineers arrived on site after the boys had been found. They were clearly brilliant people – ‘geniuses’, according to engineer Suttisak Soralump, who met them. They tested the inflatable tube at a local canal, but, after talking to the SEALs about conditions in the cave, decided it wouldn’t work inside the jagged tunnels of Tham Luang.
That left the pod. It was a two-metre-long silver tube named, of course, The Wild Boar. It looked something like a miniature rocket, which was not surprising considering who had built it. On the first day of the rescue, Musk released a video of it being tested in a swimming pool, and on the second day of the rescue, he personally delivered it to Thailand. He met briefly with engineers at Ban Chong temple, then set out for the cave. The pod was left behind – Governor Narongsak had already politely declined its use, saying it wouldn’t work. By then, eight boys had already been brought out of the cave alive. They would stick with the diving plan.
Access to the cave was extremely tight during those days, but it was around 10 pm when Musk arrived, and the day’s operation was over, so he was allowed to enter. According to a witness, the billionaire inventor arrived at the cave and promptly waded into the water until it was up to his neck.
* * *
Elon Musk’s erratic behaviour didn’t end with his sudden plunge into the waters of Tham Luang.
He took to social media to attack Governor Narongsak, claiming he wasn’t the real commander of the rescue, and citing another Thai man who had been helping advise SpaceX about their projects.
Then things really got nasty.
Vern Unsworth was asked by CNN if he thought the mini-sub would have worked. Vern was smiling, but his language was colourful.
‘Stick his submarine where it hurts,’ he said. ‘It just had absolutely no chance of working. He had no conception of what the cave passage was like. The submarine was about five foot six [inches] long, rigid, so it wouldn’t have gone around corners or around any obstacles. It wouldn’t have made the first fifty metres into the cave, from the dive start point. Just a PR stunt.’
Elon Musk reacted furiously, tweeting this response: ‘We will make one [video] of the mini-sub-pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problem. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.’
The tweet was later deleted. Musk offered absolutely no evidence to back his ‘pedo’ claim. Chiang Rai police said no charges or complaints had ever been made against Vern.
In the following days, stocks for the billionaire’s main company, Tesla, nosedived, the market shocked at the outburst and concerned about what it meant for Musk’s mental stability.
A few days later, Musk took to Twitter again, this time to apologise. He said he’d ‘spoken in anger after Mr. Unsworth said several untruths & suggested I engage in a sexual act with the mini-sub, which had been built as an act of kindness & according to specifications from the dive team leader’.
A lawyer acting on behalf of Vern contacted Musk, suggesting he get in contact to avoid a court case. But the tech boss obviously didn’t get the memo. Just when the whole sorry spat had almost been forgotten, Musk let fly again.
In emails to a Buzzfeed reporter in early September, Musk accused Vern of moving to Thailand to marry a twelve-year-old child bride. Once again, the American offered no evidence to back the scandalous claim. The accusation was made all the more bizarre considering Vern’s partner, Tik, was in her forties and had been with him for seven years. Musk had meant the email to be off the record, but the reporter had not agreed to the condition in advance – as is customary – and so published it.
At the time of writing, legal action was pending.
29
Appeasing the Sleeping Lady
THE NAUSEATING SMELL OF overripe pig flesh wafted through the air, mixing with incense from joss sticks. Each subtle shift in the breeze would reveal one or the other winning the olfactory battle. Animism and Buddhism swirled and blended together, as they so often do in the spiritual lives of Thais.
For some outsiders
, it was a strange offering.
Pigs’ heads after the rescue of thirteen Wild Boars?
But the long table was also set with chicken, fish and beautifully decorated floral arrangements in green, white and yellow – gifts to appease the sleeping princess spirit of the mountain, who some Thais believed had trapped the Wild Boars. A portrait of Saman Gunan in a red beret took a place of honour at one end of the table, shaded by a parasol and surrounded by more flowers.
The ceremony was held on 16 July at the staging area outside the cave entrance. Where SEALs once filled their silver air tanks, now VIP guests sat on plastic chairs, most of them in military uniforms. Governor Narongsak was guest of honour. Across the dirt road were thousands of volunteers in yellow shirts and blue caps. The boys were still in hospital but their families were there, dressed in white; they had their own marquee behind the table of pigs’ heads, with no line of sight to the spectacle that was about to unfold.
Drums were beaten, conch shells were blown. Male fire-breathers whirled between the VIPs and pigs’ heads, exhaling huge flames. Young women in white satin dresses and golden headdresses circled around like Sirens, gracefully throwing flowers into the air.
Governor Narongsak lit four candles on a wooden stand, a summons to the spirits in all four directions of the compass. An elderly man began a long chant of Buddhist prayers.
As the chanting dragged on, I walked off to survey some of the areas that had been off-limits while the operation was underway. I was curious to see inside the building where the coordinators had been throughout the ordeal – the war room.
It had seen better days, with its faded poster and broken cave model. It was hard to believe this was the nerve-centre for the biggest rescue operation in living memory.
Further down the hill, where I’d once washed my boots in the blue pipe fountain, the generator trucks were gone and the area was open. Thais had placed little piles of offerings – food, sweets and incense sticks – on the soil. It looked like a miniature graveyard, but it was something close to the opposite.
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