Originally Posted by
IAN-UK
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 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
Not boring at all, IAN-UK, always good to research the facts. Pre-emptive apology to the OP for us dragging this Malaysia Truly Asia post off topic and into the ocean (okay, in to the sea)
Personally, I agree with you - I don't see Langkawi as being in the Andaman Sea either, but in our day to day work providing guides to yacht captains, we generally overlook it when we prepare an itinerary down the coast from here.
Some further digging shows the all-knowing, all-seeing wikipedia overlord
giving Langkawi an "Andaman Sea" location, but your sailing guide's lat/long guideline (also on the
wiki Andaman Sea page) - also skips any islands south and east of the southern tip of Phuket. This means islands like Phi Phi, Koh Lanta, Koh Lipe etc miss out too, but they are all known locally as being in the Andaman Sea
Anyway, its all with good intentions. And trust the Wiki Overlords at your own risk...
