On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 13:08:39 GMT, wrote:


Bil wrote:
wrote:
Lanta Island is in the Indian Ocean.

? I'm not certain my grade school English and geography teachers would
agree with you.

First, Koh Lanta is made of two islands, Koh Lanta Noi to the north
and Koh Lanta Yai to the south, with a ferry joining the two. E of the
Koh Lanta are a dozen or so smaller islands (Koh Po, Koh Kam Yai, Koh
Talabeng, Koh Klang, etc).

Second, the Koh Lanta twins might be better regarded as being in the
Andaman Sea.

So your sentence might be better formed as:

The Lanta islands are in the Andaman Sea.


Please tell your grade school geography teacher that Andaman Sea
is a part of the Indian Ocean (not Pacific Ocean).

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Sea

My grade school geography teacher would never have argued that the
Andaman Sea was part of the Pacific! I think she would have grudgingly
accepted the notion that the Andaman S was a part of the Indian O, but
she would have argued further that the basin of the Andaman Sea is
geologically distinct from that of the Indian Ocean and much more so
than, say, the Bay of Bengal (which she accepted as a part of the
Indian O). I suspect that she was right, hence the demarcation of the
Andaman Sea made by oceanographers and cartographers.

She (Ms Pilkington) likewise argued that only unthinking fools
regarded Europe and Asia as separate continents - she said Asia and
Europe had been joined together as Eurasia longer than the Indian
subcontinent had been joined to Asia.

Ms P would not have regarded wikipedia as an authority. Why should
you?

And tell your grade school English teacher that most people use
the term "Lanta Island" possibly because Lanta Yai and Lanta Noi
islands are so close to each other that they look just like one
island with a river or canal running through.

See http://www.koh-lanta-thailand.com/info/maplanta.htm

If you do a Google search for "Lanta Island" you'll get about
100,400 results whereas a search for "Lanta Islands" only gives
about 656 results.

And my grade school English teacher (Ms Soper) would have likely
retorted that a mistake made by the majority (especially when the
'most people' to which you refer is just a majority of webpage
authors (largely writing in English, I assume) about islands in
Thailand) is not reason for doing likewise. After all, how do the
people of Thailand refer to Koh Lanta Yai and K Lanta Noi?

And Ms P would have chimed in that 10,000 years ago, the Ko Lanta
twins were not islands but just another part of the Eurasian mainland,
because the sea level was quite low then. And about five thousand
years ago, the sea level in that area was a couple of metres higher
than at present, so only Koh Lanta Yai and K Lanta Noi would have been
'further apart', to use your concept.