James Massola is South-east Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media. He was previously chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Canberra. He is the winner of a Quill award for investigative journalism and has been a Walkleys and Quills finalist on two other occasions. He was on the ground at Tham Luang cave for the rescue operation.
First published in 2018
Copyright © James Massola 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76052 974 1
eISBN 978 1 76087 006 5
Map by Darian Causby
Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Cover design: Blue Cork
Front cover photographs: Courtesy of the Thai Navy SEALs
For the tiny one, Sabina. The twins, Carlo and Giacomo.
For those who came before.
For those who should still be here.
For my parents, Carlo and Rose.
And for Karen Jane, most of all.
CONTENTS
Map of Tham Luang cave
List of key players
23 JUNE: OUTSIDE
An ordinary day in Mae Sai
23 JUNE: INSIDE
A rising sense of dread
23–25 JUNE: OUTSIDE
Sound the alarm
24–29 JUNE: INSIDE
In the dark
28 JUNE – 1 JULY: OUTSIDE
International help arrives
2–6 JULY: INSIDE
Found
6–7 JULY: INSIDE
Messages from the deep
6–7 JULY: OUTSIDE
Mission critical
8 JULY: INSIDE
Sunday, 10.08 am
9–10 JULY: INSIDE
Escape to freedom
10–18 JULY: INSIDE
Mission possible
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
References
Notes
‘I honestly thought there was zero chance of success.’
DR RICHARD HARRIS
‘I can’t emphasise enough how dangerous it was for the kids.
It was absolutely life and death.’
CRAIG CHALLEN
LIST OF KEY PLAYERS
THE WILD BOARS
Coach Ekapol ‘Ek’ Chantawong (25)
Mongkol ‘Mark’ Boonpiam (13)
Somepong ‘Pong’ Jaiwong (13)
Pornchai ‘Tee’ Kamluang (16)
Pipat ‘Nick’ Pho (15)
Duganpet ‘Dom’ Promtep (13) (captain)
Panumas ‘Mick’ Sangdee (13)
Adul Sam-on (14)
Peerapat ‘Night’ Sompiangjai (17)
Prajak ‘Note’ Sutham (14)
Nattawut ‘Tle’ Takamrong (14)
Chanin ‘Titan’ Vibulrungruang (11)
Ekarat ‘Bew’ Wongsukchan (14)
Nopparat ‘Nop’ Kanthawong (senior coach)
Songpol Kanthawong (13)
Thaweechai Nameng (13)
THE DIVERS
Josh Bratchley (British)
Erik Brown (Canadian)
Dr Craig Challen (Australian)
Robert Harper (British)
Dr Richard Harris (Australian)
Chris Jewell (British)
Ivan Karadzic (Danish)
Jason Mallinson (British)
Mikko Paasi (Finnish)
Claus Rasmussen (Danish)
Ben Reymenants (Belgian)
Connor Roe (British)
Rick Stanton (British)
John Volanthen (British)
Jim Warny (Belgian)
ROYAL THAI ARMY
Dr Pak Loharnshoon
Major General Chalongchai Chaiyakham, Deputy
Commander of the Third Thai Army
THAI NAVY SEALS
Rear Admiral Arpakorn Yuukongkaew, Commander
Captain Anan Surawan
Sergeant Saman Gunan (retired)
THAI OFFICIALS
Prayut Chan-o-cha, Prime Minister of Thailand
Narongsak Osatanakorn, out-going Governor of Chiang Rai
Province and chief of the rescue mission
Weerasak Kowsurat, Minister of Tourism and Sports
Anupong Paochinda, Interior Minister
CAVE EXPERTS
Martin Ellis (British cave expert)
Robert Harper (British)
Kamol ‘Lak’ Khunngarmkuamdee
Chaiporn Siripornpibul, speleologist with Thailand’s Mineral
Resources Department
Vernon Unsworth (British, Thai-based)
THAI VOLUNTEERS
Bird’s nest collectors, Koh Libong, Trang Province
Panom Cheunpiron, pump supplier
And a cast of thousands
RESCUE COORDINATORS
Mike Clayton, equipment needs
Gary Mitchell, communications
AUSTRALIA
Divers from the Specialist Response Group, Australian
Federal Police, and the Australian Navy
BRITAIN
Bill Whitehouse, Vice Chairman, British Cave Rescue Council
Emma Porter, Secretary, British Cave Rescue Council
CHINA
Wang Yingjie, leader of a team of rescuers from the Beijing
Peaceland Foundation
Green Boat Emergency
UNITED STATES
Major Charles Hodges, US Mission Commander
Master Sergeant Derek Anderson, Dive Operations
Commander
Search and rescue team from 31st Rescue Squadron
Airmen from the 353rd Special Operations Group
23 JUNE: OUTSIDE
An ordinary day in Mae Sai
June marks the beginning of the rainy season in Mae Sai. The days are long, with twilight beginning soon after 5 am and dusk not arriving until after 7 pm. The sun is at its hottest just after midday but, during the summer months of June, July and August, the heat creeps up on you. Fog and mist, rolling down from the nearby Doi Nang Non mountain range—the Mountain of the Sleeping Lady, in the local tongue—is not uncommon at dawn, fooling unprepared visitors in the early hours of the morning.
If it has rained overnight, a jacket often seems like a good idea during the first couple of hours after sunrise. Mid-mornings are decidedly pleasant, too, as the temperature idles its way through the mid-20s. But it keeps creeping up and, sometime after midday, as the mercury reaches 30°C and the heat and humidity take hold, you’re like the proverbial frog in the pot who failed to realise the water was slowly boiling. Suddenly you’re sweating, your feet feel trapped in closed-toe shoes and that jacket becomes just an extra item to carry. The heat remains for long stretches of the afternoon and in summer the ever-present threat of rain suffuses the air with moisture; the humidity can rise above 90 per cent.
In this part of the world, you can usually smell the rain before you feel it. The air you breathe becomes a little heavier, its odour
somehow a little thicker and—out in the fields and backroads that lead to the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex—the dirt beneath your feet, which never has quite enough time to dry out, somehow readies for the rain to fall. A few moments before the rain begins the breeze gives the game away, quickening and cooling as it brushes an exposed cheek or arm. A drop or three, then the water descends. If you don’t take cover almost immediately, you’re soaked through to the bone.
Phahonyothin Road, which cuts through the centre of Mae Sai, is neatly divided by a row of well-tended trees and shrubs. Along this main street old and tired two-, three- and fourstorey buildings sit side by side. Down side roads and alleyways, the houses are even more modest. Mae Sai is a small town in a neglected northern corner of Thailand’s Chiang Rai Province—850 kilometres from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, home to the country’s political and business elite.
The shop-owners and stallholders on the town’s main road are adept at dealing with these downpours of course, but the people on each side of the street tend to handle the rain in a distinctly different way. On the western side, where the stalls, markets and carts are thickest, many of the stallholders band together and run long stretches of plastic sheeting from the shop-front walls to their carts on the road. These market stalls—which sell T-shirts, brightly coloured jewellery, roasted nuts, noodles and an array of local delicacies—are jammed next to each other with no apparent regard for the (probably non-existent) occupational health and safety laws. The sheeting, a temporary affair, is slung so low that it’s at decapitation height for anyone approaching 6 feet tall. But for the shoppers who promenade up and down, casting their eyes over the goods, it does offer some protection from sudden downpours.
On the eastern side of the road, shopfronts—home to banks, massage parlours and convenience stores—are more common. There’s the occasional fly-by-night stall offering cheap knockoffs of name-brand electrical goods, and more food carts, too. The main obstacles are electrical cables that, every few metres, run across the footpath from the shopfronts and electrical poles to the food stalls.
When the rain hits the eastern side of the street, the pedestrians vanish, food carts are packed up and electrical cables are wound back as quickly as the water descends. But on the western side people barely blink as the plastic awnings become laden with water and pools form under foot.
The weather in Mae Sai on Saturday, 23 June 2018, was no different to any other Saturday in summer. It was hot, rain was threatening, and the stallholders and shop-owners along the main street of Mae Sai—typical of country towns the world over—were setting up for a morning of trade.
At the northern end of the street, cars were beginning to line up at the border crossing that leads over the river to Myanmar, to Mae Sai’s sister town of Tachileik. The Thai–Myanmar border is a porous one, with people from the local hill tribes who don’t quite belong to either nation crossing regularly for work, school and to trade. Identification cards allow them to live in the area, crossing the border as needed, but they are restricted from moving into other parts of Thailand.
On this particular Saturday, the usual mix of local Thai, Burmese and tribespeople were gathering to go one way or the other, while a few westerners on visa runs were looking forward to a day out that would also see their passport stamped.
Decades earlier this area, sitting squarely within the notorious Golden Triangle, was a hot spot for the heroin trade, which has declined since the early 2000s. Tales of the drug trade and, in particular, of former drug kingpin Khun Sa, who surrendered to the Burmese government in the mid-’90s while hanging on to his fortune, still echo through the region. A police roadblock on the main road that heads south out of town to the much larger city of Chiang Rai is a legacy of the area’s connection to that drug trade.
Mae Sai is home to about 20,000 people who, along with the 50,000 or so over the border in Tachileik, rely heavily on cross-border trade—both legal and illegal—to fire the local economy.
The town boasts a number of small and medium-sized hotels but there isn’t a lot for even the most imaginative tourist to see or do there other than cross the border. If food is your thing, a delicious bowl of Bamee Yunan (egg noodles) with pork will set you back just 40 baht1 at the food carts and restaurants in and around the main street. Culinary pleasures aside, the town’s main tourist attractions are Wats, or Buddhist temples, and a couple of pleasant parks.
But for cavers, Mae Sai is a significant destination. Just a few kilometres from the town centre, on the western side of the road that runs between Mae Sai and Chiang Rai, lies the mountain range of Doi Nang Non. Home to the Tham Luang–Khun Nam Nang Non Forest Park and the Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex, it casts a long shadow over the town.
The Mountain of the Sleeping Lady is a reference to the shape of the mountain and its contours when viewed from afar. And Tham Luang Nang Non, the Cave of the Sleeping Lady, lies deep within the forest park, where it has attracted adventurous kids from the surrounding region since it was first settled.
For thousands of years, the story of the Sleeping Lady, the Princess of Sipsong Panna, has been passed down from generation to generation. Local legend has it that the beautiful Princess fell in love with a stablehand and became pregnant. That angered the Princess’s father, so the pair fled. But when the stablehand left their hiding place to find food, he was discovered and killed by the King’s soldiers.
Heartbroken, the Princess stabbed herself in the heart with a hairpin, and she and their unborn child died. The water that runs through the cave during the monsoon season is said to be the Princess’s blood, and the mountain itself is the dead Princess. Over time, the story has been re-fashioned so that it accords with the Buddhist beliefs of the majority of the locals.
Mae Sai doesn’t offer much excitement for Western tourists seeking beaches, cocktails and bikinis. But for cave explorers, the Sleeping Lady offers a labyrinth of challenging caverns and tunnels. There are numerous stories of locals becoming lost in the cave complex over the years—for decades it has drawn local teenagers looking for adventure.2 The challenge of exploring the cave in the dry season, with its choke points, narrow tunnels and spectacular caverns has proven difficult to resist. About 10 kilometres of the cave have been explored, but there is a little asterisk on the south-western point of the current map that only hints at the unexplored path ahead. That asterisk attracts some of the best, most experienced cavers on the planet. But it also serves as a magnet for local kids looking for adventure—like the Wild Boars football team.
The Boars couldn’t have missed the warning sign near the entrance of Tham Luang cave. It advises would-be explorers against venturing into the cave during the monsoon season, between July and October, when the huge warren of caves can be hit by flash floods at a moment’s notice.
But it was 23 June—a full week or more before July’s rains were due to fall. It was hot, and the sky was clear. Besides, in the previous year the first monsoon rains had started halfway through July, three weeks later than usual. Maybe, after finishing soccer practice and then cycling several kilometres to the cave, their blood was up and they just ignored it. Maybe they were driven by the age-old desire to explore the unknown, despite the dangers, the fast-approaching wet season and the difficult passages and narrow pinch points within the caves.
Whatever else the Wild Boars may have thought on that unremarkable Saturday, they were determined to start exploring Tham Luang cave, deep inside the Doi Nang Non mountain that keeps a watchful eye over their small town of Mae Sai. Their decision to enter the cave, unbeknownst to the world, and then to press on and on as the rains fell outside, would prove a fateful one. From the beginning the odds were stacked against the Boars and their coach getting out alive.
The fate of the twelve Boars and their coach captured the attention of the world. Would they escape, against all the odds? And if so, how?
And for Thailand, it was a chance for the nation to come together, regardless of social class o
r politics. After twelve coups since 1932, the people are accustomed to political upheaval. It’s one of the many reasons why Thais hold the royal family and their King, the head of state and a bastion of stability, in such high regard. For Thais, disillusioned so recently by yet another coup that further damaged their faith in the political institutions governing their society, one level below the venerated institution of the Crown, it was an event that would unite them and make them believe in their nation again.
For the people around the world who were transfixed by the team’s plight but who had no direct connection to their culture, their home or their people, it offered simply this—the hope of a good news story in an age of uncertainty.
In the end, the rescue was almost like a fairy tale. And it all happened in a cave possessed by a long-dead mythical princess.
It began with a Facebook post.
In the days before that fateful Saturday, the young members of the Wild Boars soccer team hatched a plan. They wanted to explore Tham Luang cave, and they asked their 25-year-old coach, Ekapol ‘Ek’ Chantawong, if he would take them there. Three of them, including Ek and 13-year-old Duganpet ‘Dom’ Promtep, the team captain, had been some way inside the cave before but, for most of them, the cave remained unexplored territory.
Ek, who was orphaned at a young age and had spent close to a decade as a Buddhist novice, loved his young charges and regularly took them swimming or on bike rides after practice sessions. As a member of the Tai Lue minority, one of several ethnic groups in an area that covers the open borders of Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and China, Ek is one of four members of the Boars who are officially stateless—even though he has spent most of his life in Thailand. After ten years in the monastery, before he achieved the status of full monk, Ek left to take care of his ailing grandmother, who lived across the border in Myanmar.
He first began coaching the Wild Boars back in 2013–14, soon after senior coach Nopparat ‘Nop’ Kanthawong founded the soccer academy. Coaching the Boars gave Ek another outlet for his energy, perhaps offering him the opportunity to perform the role of father figure for boys who, like him, didn’t have much, and satisfying a deeper need that grew from the loss of his own father.
The Great Cave Rescue Page 1
