Thai Cave Boys Leave Hospital and Apologize for All the Fuss

BANGKOK — Before they were discovered trapped in a flooded cave in northern Thailand, the 12 members of the Wild Boars youth soccer team and their coach drained much of their energy trying to dig their way out. Using stones to carve a large hole, they scraped at the chamber’s ceiling, even as they became emaciated from a lack of food.

“I had no strength at all,” said Chanin Wibulroongreung, 11, at a news conference Wednesday evening local time after the teammates were released from the hospital. “I didn’t think about food because it only made me hungrier.”

The Wild Boars’ discharge from a hospital in the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai capped a remarkable rescue effort in which thousands of people around the globe joined together to extricate them from the waterlogged Tham Luang Cave in northern Thailand.

At the news conference, where they first appeared dribbling soccer balls to cheers from the assembled crowd, the Wild Boars admitted that they had acted like normal boys.

And they wanted to say that they were very, very sorry.

They had not told their parents that they would be visiting the cave, a favored spot for exploration, they said. Instead, their families were under the impression the teammates were only going out to practice soccer.

One boy said he had not informed his parents that he was going to Tham Luang because he was sure he wouldn’t be given permission.

“I would like to apologize to Dad and Mom,” said Phanumas Saengdee, 13, who recounted how he had secretly put a flashlight for a cave adventure in his soccer bag.

While the mission to liberate the soccer team trapped by flash floods June 23 generally followed an improbably successful plotline, the operation claimed the life of Saman Gunan, a 38-year-old retired Thai navy SEAL. Saman, who had volunteered to help find the missing boys, died while placing air tanks along an underwater escape route out of the cave complex.

The Wild Boar’s 25-year-old coach, Ekkapol Chantawong, described his shock at hearing of Saman’s death.

“He sacrificed his life to protect and save us, the 13 Wild Boars, so we could go back outside and be happy, live a normal life,” he said. “We have caused suffering for Saman’s family.”

While in the hospital — where they were monitored for around a week for infection and the aftereffects of a long, dark and hungry stay in Tham Luang — the boys were photographed with somber faces, holding a portrait of Saman.

Psychiatrists screened the questions at Wednesday’s news briefing to prevent the boys from having to relive the stress of their ordeal. For 10 days, the Wild Boars had sheltered in a cramped cave chamber, licking condensation off the limestone walls to survive.

Two British divers who squeezed through the flooded twists and turns of Tham Luang’s crevices found the teammates July 2.

One of the boys, a stateless teenager from Myanmar named Adul Sam-on, who spoke English with the divers, recalled Wednesday how surreal it had been to suddenly hear foreign voices emanate from the watery darkness.

“We didn’t know if it was real or not,” he said. “They got out of the water, and I was surprised they were not Thai. I didn’t know what to say so I said, ‘Hello.'”

“It was a miracle,” he added. Even after the divers found them, the Wild Boars and their coach had to prepare for the perilous escape mission, which began July 8 and took three days to complete.

Expert cave divers protected the teammates by placing them on emergency stretchers and outfitting them with full-face masks for the long underwater journey.

Yet the boys had seemed remarkably composed about the life-or-death situation they faced, according to Lt. Col. Phak Lohanchun, an army doctor and diver who stayed with them after they were found. In a Facebook post, he said he was impressed by how orderly and obedient the boys had been.

After eating, Phak said, the soccer players made sure to put any refuse in a trash bag to keep their perch in the cave clean.

“Every boy on the Wild Boar team fully understands the sacrifice everyone went through searching for them,” Phak said.

“I have confidence that the Wild Boar boys will grow into great humans for this country, and be valuable and prominent in Thailand,” he added.

The boys’ coach, Ekkapol, helped the trapped soccer players, ages 11-16, to cope using meditation techniques that he had honed during his years as a Buddhist monk.

“Coach Ek is a very good-hearted man who sacrifices everything,” Phak said. “Ek would let the boys eat until they were full by sharing his portion with them.”

The boys and Ekkapol will soon ordain as Buddhist novices to atone for Saman’s death, they said. In Thai tradition, boys often enter the monkhood for brief periods to meditate and perform charity work.

In the news conference, the Wild Boars explained more about their ill-fated expedition to Tham Luang Cave. They had only been planning to explore the caverns for an hour, they said, and had packed no snacks.

Ekkapol had explored Tham Luang’s recesses before, he said, including the ledge where they were eventually found. But a flash flood sent waters rising nearly 10 feet in less than an hour, he said, forcing them to retreat deeper into the cave.

After the news conference, journalists have been asked to allow the Wild Boars to return to the business of being normal boys — something that would be impossible if the media glare around them continued.

The search-and-rescue operation drew journalists from around the world, who descended on the small town of Mae Sai, near Thailand’s border with Myanmar, hungry for a rare tale of mortal danger that had ended with an uplifting conclusion.

On Wednesday, three of the Wild Boars said that when they grew up they wanted to become navy SEALs tasked with saving others.

“We are so happy that I don’t know how to describe it in words,” Thanawut Wibulroongreung, the father of Chanin, the youngest Wild Boar, said before Wednesday’s news conference. “All we can do is to say thank you to the rescuers.”