CHIANG RAI, THAILAND – A school football outing in 2018 turned into a global race against rising floodwaters when 12 boys and their coach were trapped in Tham Luang cave for nine days without a trace.
In June 2018, twelve members of the local football club Moo Pah, or Wild Boars, and their 25‑year‑old assistant coach entered the vast cave system in northern Thailand and did not emerge. The rescue operation that followed held an estimated hundreds of millions of viewers around the world in suspense.
June 23, 2018: A birthday trip turns into disaster
After football training, the twelve boys from Moo Pah cycled with assistant coach Ekkaphon Chanthawong to Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai province. They went to mark the birthday of the oldest team member. The boys were between 11 and 16 years old, and the cave system stretches roughly ten kilometres through the Doi Nang Non mountain range on the border with Myanmar.
A sign at the entrance warned that entering between July and November was dangerous because of the monsoon. The group went in one week before that official period and was unlucky: the monsoon arrived four weeks early. Within minutes, water levels rose, their way out was cut off, and they retreated deeper into the cave, leaving food supplies behind.
Around 7 p.m., head coach Nopparat Kanthawong noticed about twenty missed calls from worried parents. He drove to the cave, found the boys’ bicycles at the entrance, and raised the alarm.
Nine days without a sign of life
For nine days, no one knew whether the thirteen people underground were still alive. Water in the cave continued to rise. Rescue teams pumped around the clock, drilled ventilation shafts and scanned the area with sonar and drones.
International cave diving teams pushed deeper into the system, through murky brown water and passages so tight they sometimes had to push their equipment ahead of them. Visibility was near zero, and the route was long and complex.
On 2 July, British cave diving specialists Richard Stanton and John Volanthen located the group about five kilometres from the entrance, perched on a dry rock shelf. The first to respond to the divers was 14‑year‑old Adul Sam‑on, the only boy who spoke English in addition to Thai, Burmese and Chinese.
Adul belonged to the Wa ethnic minority from Myanmar and had been smuggled into Thailand by his parents at the age of six. He lived without papers and without citizenship.
More than 10,000 people from around the world
Once the boys were found, the most difficult phase began: how to bring thirteen people out through roughly three kilometres of flooded, narrow passages. More than 1,000 active rescuers from over ten countries took part, including teams from Britain, Australia, China, the United States, Finland, Sweden, Israel and Germany.
Counting logistics, supplies and volunteers, around 10,000 people were involved. Local residents washed the divers’ uniforms, cooked thousands of meals a day – including halal food for Muslim helpers – moved equipment and slept in the car park outside the cave.
On 4 July, British cave explorers Jason Mallinson and Chris Jewell were flown in with 500 kilograms of diving equipment. Australian diver Craig Challen arrived with Dr Richard Harris, an anaesthetist from Adelaide who was also one of Australia’s most experienced cave divers. Harris had been about to start a holiday on the Nullarbor Plain when he received the call.
Sedated through the darkness: A critical medical gamble
The basic problem was stark: none of the boys could dive. They faced three kilometres of flooded, constricted tunnels in total darkness, and some could barely swim. A panic attack underwater could have killed both a child and the accompanying diver.
Dr Richard Harris made the decision that ultimately enabled the rescue. He sedated each of the trapped boys with a drug that typically worked for about one hour, even though each dive would last around three hours. He trained the other divers to maintain anaesthesia during the journey.
Unconscious and wearing full‑face masks, the boys were guided one by one through the submerged labyrinth. The method left no room for error but reduced the risk of panic and drowning.
Harris also decided in which order the group would be brought out, overturning the authorities’ original plan. Instead of rescuing the weakest last, the weakest were to leave first. He and Craig Challen remained in the cave until the end and did not emerge until all thirteen people had been brought to safety.
Saman Kunan: The rescuer who did not return
On the night of 5–6 July, former Thai Navy SEAL Saman Kunan dived into the cave to position compressed‑air cylinders along the rescue route. The 37‑year‑old had left the navy in 2006 and worked as a security officer at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, but volunteered for the mission.
On his way back, he lost consciousness underwater. His dive partner attempted resuscitation but could not revive him.
Saman Kunan was posthumously awarded Thailand’s highest order and honoured with a statue at the cave entrance on 13 December 2018. In December 2019, Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara also died from an infection linked to the operation.
During those days underground, assistant coach Ekkaphon Chanthawong carried a different kind of burden. A former Buddhist monk, he led the boys in daily meditation, encouraged them and drank very little water so the children could have more.
He was in the worst physical condition when divers reached the group. From inside the cave, he later wrote a handwritten letter to all the parents, apologising for what had happened.
Four without passports: Stateless in the cave
After the rescue, it emerged that four of the thirteen had no citizenship, a situation not uncommon in the border region with Myanmar. Adul Sam‑on, Pornchai Kamluang and Mongkhol Boonpian, all from ethnic minorities, as well as coach Ekkaphon, were living in Thailand without papers.
Ekkaphon came from the Wa region, which is not an internationally recognised state and does not issue travel documents. He had lived in Thailand for years without a legal identity.
In August 2018, the Thai government fast‑tracked citizenship for all four. The UNHCR welcomed the move and saw it as a signal to other countries: with a single administrative act, Thailand had shown how millions of stateless people could be given an official identity – and thus access to schooling, work, travel and health care.
Life after rescue for the Wild Boars
Three weeks after they were freed, eleven of the twelve boys and coach Ekkaphon donned the robes of Buddhist novices. They did so in gratitude, in mourning for Saman Kunan and to help process the experience. The only Christian in the group, Adul Sam‑on, did not take part.
In Thailand, the boys have been regarded as national heroes ever since. Authorities shielded them deliberately, allowing only carefully selected appearances under the supervision of child‑welfare officials.
The gravel road to Tham Luang, once little known, is now lined with market stalls. Visitor numbers have risen to about 6,000 people per day, compared with roughly 150 before the incident.
One boy stepped out of this protected routine. Team captain Duangphet Promthep, nicknamed Dom, received a football scholarship from the Zico Foundation and flew to England in September 2022 to attend the Brooke House College Football Academy in Leicestershire.
On 12 February 2023, a teacher found him unconscious in his room. Dom died two days later, on 14 February 2023, at the age of 17.
The cause of death remained officially unclear, and police ruled out any foul play. At the five‑year anniversary of the rescue in July 2023, his former teammates laid white flowers before a commemorative image at the cave.
Fifty‑seven minutes that changed everything
The story of Tham Luang cave was, at its core, several stories at once: about a monsoon that arrived too early, about volunteers who interrupted holidays or gave their lives, about children who survived nine days without light or food, guided to calm by a former monk, and about four people without passports who received citizenship only after emerging from the darkness.
For those who watched on television or their phones, it was a story that seemed to touch almost every aspect of life at the time. Today, the site in Chiang Rai has become a place of pilgrimage.
The diving equipment used in the mission still lies in the cave, now preserved as part of an exhibit.