 You are clear for launch. And with that, shut down your visors, O2 on, and prepare for ignition to O2. Copy that, and um... Hey guys, Mr. Ruchoff. This is our first lesson in our Southeast Asia unit. And as we do in all of our different units, we start this unit by looking at the physical geography and how the physical geography impacts the people in the region. Now we find that Southeast Asia as a region is located just to the south of China and to the east across from the Bay of Bangal from India. And all the other reasons we've looked at, one thing they've all had in common is being a large body of land, but that's not what we find in Southeast Asia, which is really only the combination of just two peninsulas and a vast archipelago of over 25,000 islands. The mainland of Southeast Asia is made up of the Indo-Chinese and the Malay peninsulas. And oh by the way, the term Indo-Chinese comes from being in between India and China. In all, there are 10 countries we find in this region. On the mainland we have Myanmar, which used to be known as Burma. We have Thailand, we have Landlock Laos, we have Vietnam, and we have Cambodia. At the south of the Malay peninsula is the western part of a country named, oddly enough, Malaysia. Now the eastern portion of Malaysia is found on the northern shore of an island known as Borneo. Here also we find the small country of Brunei. But Brunei isn't the smallest country of Southeast Asia. Singapore is. Singapore is a small island country at the very southern tip of the mainland peninsula. Then there is Indonesia, which is spread out in the south with over 17,500 islands. And to the east of Indonesia, we find only all the rest of South Asia's islands belong to the Philippines, which itself has over 7,600 different islands. Now one of the ways that geographers look at countries is we look at its shape. It can tell you a lot about that country. And there are five basic shapes of states. We have a compact, fragmented, corrupted, elongated, and appropriated country. And Southeast Asia has all but one of these. The first shape we'll talk about is a compact country, and Southeast Asia has three of these, which are Cambodia, Brunei, and Singapore. A compact country looks sort of like a circle or a square, where every portion of the border is roughly equidistant to the center. The advantage of a compact country is that their shape makes it easier for a government to be able to move services anywhere in the country, as well as to defend its borders. And generally, this means the country has a stable history. Now Singapore is actually another type of state, a city state. Now we talked about city states when we talked about the ancient Greece. A city state is a city that forms its own independent state. And it's important to realize that Singapore really is a city on a fairly small island. How big? Well, we're only talking about 279 square miles. To put that in perspective, the city of Austin, Texas is over 20 square miles larger. In another way, Singapore is about the same size as Bryan and College Station Texas and all the suburbs. However, with a population of 5.6 million people, Singapore is five times more populated than Austin and is 24 times more populated than College Station. So we can see it's pretty urbanized. Alright, so if you take a compact country and you put a tail on it, you get what is called a corrupted country. If you look at the countries of Vietnam in Myanmar, you should see what I mean. You essentially have two compact countries, but they each have an extension or a tail that runs down towards the Malay Peninsula. These extensions or tails are what cause problems for the country. As it's difficult for the government to be able to move goods and services into the area, it is in these regions that are prone to become sanctuaries for anti-government forces that might spur revolutions. And if your country is long with no central territory, like Vietnam or Laos, then it is what we call an elongated country. Here the entire country can have the same type of difficulties that a corrupted country has in its tail. And this has led several elongated countries in history to separate into two different countries, like North and South, such as North and South Korea, or even what used to be North and South Vietnam. And if you look at Malaysia, the Philippines, or Indonesia is pretty easy to see that they are great examples of fragmented countries. A fragmented country is a country in which at least two parts are actually separated from each other. Now you can imagine government services, communication, travel are all difficult within a country like this. It also makes it difficult for our government to be able to control everywhere in this territory. And the last type of country is a perforated country. Now the word perforated literally means having a whole and that's exactly what we're talking about. A perforated country is one that completely surrounds another country. And this is the only type of shape of a country that we do not find in Southeast Asia, but Africa has one. South Africa completely surrounds the tiny nation of Votoso and Europe also has a perforated country, Italy. Italy completely surrounds the smallest country in the world, Vatican City. Now obviously there is usually a high level of cooperation between both these countries because the country inside the perforated country would not be able to survive otherwise. So now we know where the countries are and their shapes. Let's look at Southeast Asia's physical features. First there are mountains and into the northern portion of Southeast Asia we get the eastern Himalayas. Now from this mightiest of mountain ranges we get the Arcan Mountains that move north and south through Myanmar. The Himalayas also help form that Thai highlands which are found in the northern portion of the country. And then running down this Indo-Chinese Peninsula are the Anamite Mountains which are found in Laos and Vietnam. Now just what the Himalayas, each of these mountain chains were formed through convergent folding. But the mainland peninsulas are not the only part of Southeast Asia with islands, the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines also have mountains. In fact Indonesia's mountains can reach as high as over 16,000 feet. But unlike the mainland's mountains which were formed by convergent folding, these mountains, actually the islands themselves, were formed by convergent folding. Yes, once again we're talking about the Ring of Fire. No, not that Ring of Fire, this Ring of Fire. The islands in Southeast Asia are all part of a subduction zone that actually goes around all of the Pacific Ocean. And if we're talking about convergent subduction that means we have volcanoes. Today there are still 200 active volcanoes in Indonesia including one called Krakatau. Now this was a volcanic island in Indonesia, well actually all the islands are volcanic. In 1883 it erupted and nearly completely destroyed the island. It is the eruption from Krakatau that actually created the loudest sound ever in modern history. People 3,000 miles away were able to hear that which is incredibly remarkable. Oh by the way, Krakatau has erupted multiple times since 1883 including this footage shot in 2018 and even as I am recording this in April 2020, Krakatau right now is erupting. Now out of the mountains on the mainland there are several rivers but the biggest and most significant is the Mekong River. Mekong is only one of several names by which this river is known. As it flows out of the Himalayas in China it then goes through five Southeast Asian countries ending up in Vietnam. With Southeast Asia being a collection islands and peninsulas you can understand how important bodies of water are. The significant bodies of water are the Bay of Bengal which we discussed in our last student in South Asia. As we look at South of Thailand, well we find the Gulf of Thailand, to the northeast of Vietnam we find the Gulf of Tonkin. This is a Gulf that actually played center stage in the beginning of America's war in Vietnam. Now between Vietnam and the Philippines is the South China Sea and on the eastern side of the Philippines is the Philippines Sea which opens out into the Pacific Ocean. Now if I told you that Southeast Asia stretched from 30 degrees north latitude to 10 degrees south latitude it should be pretty easy to determine what type of climates these places have. They have tropical climates. Indonesia and most of the Philippines are primarily a tropical wet climate and most of the mainland of Southeast Asia has either a tropical monsoon or a tropical wet dry climate. As we go up into the northern portions of Myanmar and Vietnam we find a hubus subtropical climate just like what we have here in Brian, Texas. Now I mentioned the mainland of Southeast Asia having a tropical wet dry and a monsoon climate. What's the difference? I mean after all both have both a wet season and a dry season. Well the difference is that a tropical monsoon's wet season is much longer than a tropical wet dry seasons is. And when are these tropical monsoons? Well they are exactly as we discussed on our unit in South Asia. In the summer the winds are pushing rains onto the continent and the winter these winds reverse and blow humidity and rains away from the continent creating a dry season. Now the people of Southeast Asia adapted these monsoon seasons in several ways. First of all during the summer you have all this flooding and this rain which makes the area ideal for rice which is one of the reasons why Southeast Asia is what we call a rice culture. But we understand that flooding causes problems as well. To be able to adapt to this Southeast Asians will often build their homes on stilts such as these in Cambodia. That way when the summer monsoon floods come their home is safely above the water. So what are some of the other ways that Southeast Asians interact with their environments? Well first of all there are pirates. No not like Jack's well actually pretty much exactly like Jack Sparrow. See the reality is modern pirates do exist and the Strait of Malacca which is just found just to the west of the Midland Peninsula is often a site of modern piracy. In 2003 there were over 150 pirate attacks which prompted three Southeast Asian countries to combine efforts to be able to fight the problem and they were able to reduce it down to what they called close to zero which sounds kind of like not zero right. Piracy has started to pick up as there have been over 20 attacks in 2019 and just in the first three months of this year 2020 there have already been four attacks. Now why is this important to us? Well because 15 million barrels of oil a day flows through the Straits of Malacca. In fact nearly all of the oil that Japan China and Korea gets from the Middle East must come through the Strait of Malacca and oil tankers are not immune to these attacks. Just in March of 2020 a fully laden oil tanker was attacked by 35 armed pirates and they kidnapped both the captain and its chief engineer. Although Southeast Asia is a producer of oil and even China to the east produces nearly six million barrels of oil a day. If the pirates block the flow of oil into the Straits of Malacca that means that over 50 percent of the oil needed by Southeast Asia and East Asia to run their economies is actually denied. This would have a global impact on commerce and not a good impact. All right so we've talked about tsunamis several times and we know that tsunamis are large waves that are largely created by underwater earthquakes. We also discussed the devastating tsunami that killed over 230,000 people in 2004 after a 9.0 earthquake in Indonesia. Well one of the things that came out of that horrific tsunami is an early warning system that can provide warnings within eight minutes to anyone in the region. These systems can be lifesavers because if you look at that 2004 tsunami it took that wave nearly an hour and a half to hit Thailand after starting in Indonesia. Unfortunately there are problems with the system that actually failed to warn of a 2018 tsunami that killed 2500 Indonesians but is an example of how Southeast Asians are trying to react to our environment. Then there are the river markets. Now the people in Southeast Asia first settled along the rivers when we've seen this around the world and in Southeast Asia rivers not only became ways to transport goods they actually became the markets themselves. In 2012 my family and I visited Thailand in the Amphawa river market which is shown here. Not only can you be able to go and actually buy goods on the on the banks of the river many ties will actually travel to the market on boat and purchase their goods right on the river. But while I love visiting the Amphawa river market my favorite market was the loam hole market. Now when you get to the loam hole market it looks like pretty much any other Asian market has a bunch of different types of foods and products and everyone's trying to sell things out of the stalls. See what is amazing is this market is right on top of railroad tracks active railroad tracks. Watch this. Now that train didn't go slowly by it was traveling at over 10 to 15 miles an hour. It has got to be one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen but what's more is just a few hours later a second train would come through and everyone have to do this whole thing once again. They have been doing this twice a day for nearly 50 years. By the way the name loam hole literally means umbrella opening due to the way that the merchants have to be able to close down their markets and open them back up each day. All right so we've discussed the countries where their shapes their physical features and in some ways that Southeast Asians have to interact with our environment. In our next lesson what we're going to do is we're going to start looking at the culture and the origins of that culture in Southeast Asia. Until then keep on learning.