Map: East & Southeast Asia
Geography is such a lost field for many people. Even a minimally labeled purely political map like this tells you so much! Consider proximities and lines of latitude – keeping in mind that any flat map does not do justice to a spherical world.
This is an old map. Note that Myanmar is labeled Burma.
Geography is such a lost field for many people. Even a minimally labeled purely political map like this tells you so much! Consider proximities and lines of latitude – keeping in mind that any flat map does not do justice to a spherical world.
Singapore on the southern tip of the Malay peninsula lies almost on the equator. Malaysia and Indonesia are decidedly equatorial countries. Even the Philippines, which is tropical year round, stretches well north of them and lies in the same 5 to 20 degrees north parallel as almost all of Southeast Asia ("Indochina"). Much of China is in the 20 to 40 zone, and its upper half is roughly speaking on the same parallel as the Koreas and Japan. See how far north is Beijing!
Japan's official territory, including the Ryukyu Islands, stretches far south, almost to Taiwan, which itself lies all too close to China's coast and is on a parallel with Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangzhou in China ("Canton"), and with Hanoi in northern Vietnam.
Coasts and large bodies of water matter, and elevation matters, but latitude is a major climate determiner. I realize I'm most comfortable in the temperate zone, ideally where there are four seasons. I'm not so much a beach person. My favorite countries to spend time in thus lie in the 30 to 40 degrees latitudes, usually north. Sadly, the southern hemisphere is relatively sparse in land mass at equivalent southern latitudes.
True to form, I live in New Mexico in the US, at altitude, right at 35 degrees north. Much of the US and all of Canada are well north of 40 degrees.
Do latitude and climate affect where you prefer to travel, or live?
