The 12 boys and their soccer coach rescued from a flooded cave in Thailand waved, smiled and offered traditional "wai" greetings in their first public appearance on Wednesday at a national broadcast in the northern province of Chiang Rai, Reuters reported.
Doctors, relatives and friends, some in yellow traditional garb, greeted the boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach, who wore T-shirts emblazoned with a red graphic of a wild boar and carried in footballs they kicked gently on the set.
"Bringing the Wild Boars Home," read a banner in Thai that greeted the soccer team on the set, designed to resemble a soccer field, complete with goalposts and nets, where the boys sat on a dais, beside five members of the rescue team.
A crowd received the boys who returned in vans from the hospital where they had stayed since last week's international rescue effort to get them out of the cave where they were trapped.
"I told everyone fight on, don't despair," said one of the boys, recounting the hard days.
Another, Adul Sam-on, 14, recalled the moment when two British divers found the group on July 2, squatting in a flooded chamber several kilometers within the cave complex.
"It was magical," he said. "I had to think a lot before I could answer their questions."
He added, "It was in the evening when we were scratching rocks on the top of the boulder and we heard voices."
That discovery triggered the rescue effort that brought them all to safety over the course of three days, organized by Thai navy SEALs and a global team of cave-diving experts, according to Reuters.
The group had planned to explore the Tham Luang cave complex for about an hour after soccer practice on June 23, however heavy rain flooded the tunnels and trapped the boys.
"We took turns digging at the cave walls," said their coach Ekkapol Chantawong, who has been credited with keeping the boys alive by some of their parents.
"We didn't want to wait around until authorities found us." But Reuters reported the coach as saying that their efforts were to no avail, adding, "almost everyone can swim. Some aren't strong swimmers however."
The group, which had eaten before going into the caves, took no food on the excursion, and had to subsist on water dripping from stalactites in the cave during their ordeal, the coach said.
"We only drank water," said one of the boys, nicknamed Tee.
The team's youngest member, Titan, added, "I had no strength. I tried not to think about food so I didn't get more hungry."
The boys started to recover and had already gained 3 kg each on average since the rescue, the hospital director said.
The rescue effort drew global media attention and hundreds of journalists, according to Reuters.
"We don't know what wounds the kids are carrying in their hearts," said justice ministry official Tawatchai Thaikaew, who asked for the boys' privacy to be respected after the discharge, for fear that media attention could affect their mental health.
"The media know the children are in a difficult situation, they have overcome peril and if you ask risky questions then it could break the law," he told reporters.
Reuters reported the moment "bittersweet", as two of the boys held up a framed pencil sketch of Samarn Kunan, 38, the former Thai navy diver who died while he worked underwater, laying oxygen tanks along a potential exit route out of the cave complex.
"Everyone was very sad," said the coach, Ekkapol.
"They felt like they were the reason he had to die and his family had to suffer."
