Thailand to cash in on trapped soccer kids’ cave
Tourists will soon be able to visit the subterranean Thai cave that a group of young soccer players and their coach have been stranded in for over ten days.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand plans to promote the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai as an attraction — after the locale was in the spotlight for days in the continuing coverage of the 12 boys and their 25-year-old coach stranded there, and the efforts to free them.
“The cave has become of interest for both local and foreign travelers,” Karuna Dechatiwong, the TAT director at the Chiang Rai office told the Bangkok Post.
The agency is working on putting together a route to the cave for visitors interested in seeing where the group got lost — that would include nearby communities, including a village that specializes in making paper out of mulberry trees, and one that produces seed tea.
Permission is usually required from the authorities to enter the cave in the Khun Nam Nang Non Forest Park during the rainy season — since it’s prone to flooding — but the TAT said they would ask local authorities to improve safety standards to prevent tourists from getting into trouble.
It’s unclear how far into the cave visitors will be allowed to go — so they may not see the exact slope of dirt and rocks the team survived on for nine days by drinking drips of water from stalactites.
Chiang Rai attracted 2.7 million tourists last year but the number is now expected to increase.