Malay Peninsula

Locator map

The Malay Peninsula or Thai-Malay Peninsula (Malay: Semenanjung Tanah Melayu, Thai: คาบสมุทรมลายู) is in Southeast Asia. The land mass runs approximately north-south and, at its teminus, is the southern-most point of the Asian mainland. The area contains territories of Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.

The Titiwangsa Mountains is part of the Tenasserim Hills system, and forms the backbone of the Peninsula. They form the southernmost section of the central cordillera which runs from Tibet through the Kra Isthmus (the Peninsula's narrowest point) into the Malay peninsula.[1] The Straits of Malacca separates the Malay Peninsula from the Indonesian island of Sumatra while the south coast is separated from the island of Singapore by the Straits of Johor.

The Malay term Tanah Melayu (literally: 'Malay Soil') is generally used by the Malays and occasionally used in political discourse to describe uniting all ethnic Malay people on the peninsula under one Malay nation, although this ambition was largely realised with the creation of Malaysia.

References

  1. ↑ The Physical Geography of Southeast Asia, Avijit Gupta

See also