The young soccer team and their coach who were rescued from a cave in northern Thailand have joined a ceremony at a local temple to thank the holy spirits for their rescue.
Dressed in white, the Wild Boars team circled a Buddhist shrine at a temple in the northern province of Chiang Rai three times and draped bone remains of one of Buddha's disciples kept at the temple with a white cloth.
The ritual is typically held one day ahead of a Buddhist ordination ceremony in Thailand, but this one is more special because it is meant for the group to thank holy spirits for their rescue, said Prapan Kamjoi, chief of Chiang Rai's Buddhist office.
The ritual was also held in honour of Saman Kunan, the only casualty during the dramatic search and rescue mission, Prapan said.
Saman Kunan, a diver, died while placing oxygen tanks inside the cave.
The group will attend another Buddhist ritual on Wednesday - a hair-shaving ceremony - to be prepared for a nine-day period as novices.
In Thailand the majority of the population are Buddhists, ordination as monks serves as an act for gratitude. Any adult male can enter a brief monkhood, while boys can serve briefly as novices.
Fourteen-year-old Adul Sam-on was the only one in the group of 13 - a dozen boys aged 11 to 16 and their coach - who did not join the ceremony on Tuesday and will not serve as a Buddhist novice because he is a Christian.
The group visited Tham Luang-Khun Nam Nang Non Cave, 1,000 kilometres north of Bangkok, on June 23.
They were stranded for over two weeks as a flash flood blocked their only exit, leading to Thailand's biggest rescue operation to date involving thousands of people from many countries.
