Every year, around the middle of April, a mayhem of water breaks out in Chiang Mai. Tools are downed, traffic grinds to a halt and everyone takes to the streets for the world's biggest water fight. And what a fight it is; vendors appear with their arsenals of brightly coloured water pistols, buckets and hoses, mass crowds descend on the city's moat, and the city gets drenched from head to toe.
This is Songkran, the mother of all excuses for Thais to party and enjoy themselves. And as the hot season reaches its zenith, with daytime temperatures into the 100s, Thailand beckons the rainy season with a cooling off celebration of water. What was once a symbolic tradition has now turned into a week-long commercial riot of water.