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Kra Isthmus

Isthmus in Thailand

Summary

Isthmus in Thailand

Field	Value
name	Kra Isthmus
type	Isthmus
map	Thailand
map_relief	1
map_caption	Location in Thailand
label_position	none
location	Ranong and Chumphon, Thailand
coordinates

The Kra Isthmus (, ; ), also called the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand, is the narrowest part of the Malay Peninsula. The western part of the isthmus belongs to Ranong province and the eastern part to Chumphon province, both in Southern Thailand. At its narrowest point, between the Thai cities of Kra Buri and Chumphon, the coastal distance between the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand is only 44 km (27 mi).

The Kra Isthmus marks the boundary between two sections of the mountain chain which runs from Tibet through the Malay peninsula. The southern part is the Phuket Range, which is a continuation of the Tenasserim Hills, extending further northwards for over 400 km beyond the Three Pagodas Pass.

The Kra Isthmus is in the Tenasserim–South Thailand semi-evergreen rain forests ecoregion. Dipterocarps are the dominant trees in the ecoregion.

Pacific War

On 8 December 1941 local time, the Imperial Japanese Army landed in Songkhla, invading Thailand. Because of the International Date Line, this actually occurred hours before the 7 December (Hawaii time) attack on Pearl Harbor, making it the first major action of the Pacific War. Japanese forces then moved south towards Perlis and Penang as part of the Malayan campaign, which culminated in the capture of Singapore.

Kra Canal

The Thai Canal is a long-standing proposal to join the Gulf of Thailand with the Andaman Sea. Various routes were proposed to shortcut voyages from India to China, and avoiding the Strait of Malacca. The northernmost route was championed by Edward O'Riley (1821-1856), a government official in Burma, and Henry Wise, in England, when it was the subject of a report to the British Parliament in 1859 by Consul Robert Schomburk from Bangkok. A later crossing is related by Loftus.

References

"Kra, Isthmus of". Oxford University Press.
See the International Institute of Marine Surveying’s [https://www.iims.org.uk/kra-canal-project/ page on the Kra Canal Project].
Gupta, A. ''The Physical Geography of Southeast Asia''
Wikramanayake, Eric; Eric Dinerstein; Colby J. Loucks; et al. (2002). ''Terrestrial Ecoregions of the Indo-Pacific: a Conservation Assessment.'' Washington, DC: Island Press.
Parfitt, Allen. "Bicycle Blitzkreig [sic] The Japanese Conquest of Malaya and Singapore 1941-1942".
Griffith University. (23 March 2010). "Thai Canal Project: Over 300 years of conceptualising and still counting". Hybrid News.
Perry, John Curtis. (2017). "Singapore: Unlikely Power". Oxford University Press.
1859 Session 2 [2572] Despatch relative to the projected ship-canal across the Isthmus of Kraa (sic.)
(1883). "Notes of a journey across the Isthmus of Krà".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

kra-isthmus isthmuses-of-asia landforms-of-thailand malay-peninsula andaman-sea gulf-of-thailand southern-thailand tanintharyi-region landforms-of-myanmar

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