Tourists joined locals – and elephants – on Khao San Road in Bangkok this week for the three-day Songkran festival, to celebrate Thailand’s traditional new year.
The festivities' water fights and paste daubings – the water is for cleansing, the paste to ward off evil – took place during a lull in the political turmoil of weeks of protests and, more recently, the Thai military's clashes with red-shirted protesters who want to oust the country's army-backed prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. Fighting last Saturday killed 23 people in Thailand's bloodiest political violence since 1992. Tourism, which accounts for 6 per cent of the country's economy, has been badly affected by the unrest. Photograph: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters