Thai cave boys have completed their time as Buddhist monks. About 300 people gathered to watch the football team leaving the Wat Phra That Doi Tung temple in the Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai province to return to their families almost three weeks after they were rescued out of the cave. Eleven children of the Wild Boars team took part in the ordination, alongside their 25-year-old coach, in honour of Thai navy Seal Saman Gunan, who died while diving during a volunteer mission to supply the cave with oxygen tanks essential to the successful rescue.
A twelfth boy did not go through the religious ritual because he isn’t Buddhist. At the temple near Thailand’s mountainous border with Myanmar, the boys and their coach sat barefooted in a large pavilion. The adults sitting behind them wore white. The boys had shaved their heads and eyebrows for the ordination. With their heads bowed, they prayed, fidgeted and occasionally yawned as monks chanted sacred texts. They then placed new monks’ robes on a table in front of a large photo of Saman.
Afterwards they changed into white shirts and blue pants. Coach Ekapol ‘Ake’ Chanthawong remained in his Buddhist robe, as he has committed to an extended period in the monkhood.
Both their physical and mental health has been judged fine.
Source: Metro