@mrtimmoore
Temporary pumps are installed to suck water from Chiang Mai’s city moats, but any water source will be raided during the Songkran festival
PHOTOGRAPHS MATT MUNRO
FOR LONG MONTHS SUMMER has been building to a crescendo in northern Thailand, slowly filling the bowl of mountains that surrounds Chiang Mai with soupy heat. By the middle of April, a sticky, wilting haze dulls the glint from the gilded Buddhas that gaze serenely out from the city’s 300 temples. The scents of frangipani, mango and hyper-spiced street food have been slow-cooked to a ripe miasma; the contents of the four-mile moat that girdles the Old City simmered to a green broth. Something has to give and it can’t wait until the rains come down in late May. At dusk on 12 April, the downtown pavements begin to mass with excitable water warriors, fingers on plastic triggers, thumbs pressed over hose tips, buckets abrim. Ahead lies a four day, man-made monsoon, which will saturate the city’s streets and all who sail in them.