Southeast Asia is truly a magical place, leaving aside the Indochina Peninsula, there are more than 25,000 islands alone, and although it looks messy, most of these islands belong to 3 countries.
Among them, it has to be mentioned that Indonesia has a total of 17,508 islands, a total area of 1.9 million square kilometers, and a total population of 271 million, which ranks first among the archipelagic countries;
The total length of Indonesia's coastline is 54,716 kilometers, which is also the second highest in the world;
In addition, the Indonesian island of Java has a population of 148 million and is also the most populous island in the world.
Next is the Philippines, which also has more than 7,000 islands, a total area of about 300,000 square kilometers, a population of 110 million, and a coastline of about 18,500 kilometers.
Malaysia also has an area of 330,000 square kilometers, 1,007 islands and a coastline of 4,675 kilometers.
It can be seen that although the number of islands in Southeast Asia is very large and looks very chaotic, the number of islands in the above three countries is more than 25,000, accounting for more than 90% of the islands, while Singapore, Timor-Leste and Brunei are relatively small in size and number of islands.
Overall, Southeast Asia is dotted with seemingly numerous islands, but there are only 6 countries.
Coincidentally, in the southeast of the United States, there is also a large number of islands, which is the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea.
Compared with Southeast Asia, the number of islands in the West Indies is much smaller, only about 1200, and the total area is only 235,000 square kilometers, which is not an order of magnitude, but the number of countries here is as high as 33, and many islands are the territory of Britain, France, the Netherlands and other countries.
Therefore, the actual situation in this area is much more chaotic than in Southeast Asia, and many countries are composed of one or two islands, covering an area of only a few hundred square kilometers, and small countries are densely distributed, which looks dense.
However, the Caribbean region has a pleasant climate and beautiful scenery, and is a natural tourist resort, which is very similar to Southeast Asia.
Figure 1-6: Southeast Asia region
Figure 7-12: Caribbean Sea region
