Originally Posted by
seavisionburma
The lower case "i" in islands makes it technically correct for Langkawi anyway - not for Penang.
Before working in maritime industries along the Andaman coast from Myanmar down to the northernmost part of peninsular Malaysia, I assumed that any reference to Andaman Islands also referred to the archipelago belonging to India.
But here any islands along the coast adjacent to the Andaman Sea are often referred to as Andaman islands...
Penang however is in the Straits of Malacca...
Bit pedantic, but there you go
Not to be outdone in the beauty of applied pedantics....
.... checking my sailing guide, it places the formal limits on the SE extent of the Andaman Sea as a line between Lem Voalan (7° 45' 00" N, 98° 18' 00" E), at the tip of Phuket, and the most northerly part of contiguous Sumatra, 5° 39' 21" N, 95° 26' 31" E.
If that holds then the Langkawi archipelago is among a host of islands bathed by the Straights of Malacca.
I concede that Langkawi (and for that matter, Phi Phi and the Thai islands below Phuket) are generally thought of as in the Andaman Sea. We need a ruling from the IHO
.
The gentler point I was making was that while I could have no objection to Faial being described as an Atlantic island (there being no Atlantic Islands), the Andaman Islands are very much extant, and have given their name to their very own body of water. Thus referring to
the Andaman Sea islands of Langkawi (and Penang) might avoid the potential confusion of labelling them
the Andaman islands.
Now you have an insight into just how boring i can get .....