Kra Isthmus
isthmus in Malay Peninsula
The Kra Isthmus (Thai: คอคอดกระ, pronounced [kʰɔ̄ː kʰɔ̂ːt kràʔ]; Malay: Segenting Kra), also called the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand, is the narrowest part of the Malay Peninsula. The western part of the isthmus belongs to Ranong province and the eastern part to Chumphon province, both in Southern Thailand. At its narrowest point, between the Thai cities of Kra Buri and Chumphon, the coastal distance between the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand is only 44 km (27 mi).
The Kra Isthmus marks the boundary between two sections of the mountain chain which runs from Tibet through the Malay peninsula. The southern part is the Phuket Range, which is a continuation of the Tenasserim Hills, extending further northwards for over 400 km (250 mi) beyond the Three Pagodas Pass.
The Kra Isthmus is in the Tenasserim–South Thailand semi-evergreen rain forests ecoregion. Dipterocarps are the dominant trees in the ecoregion.
Ancient trans-peninsular route
The isthmus carried traffic between the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf of Thailand long before the canal proposals. Bellina and her co-authors give the crossing at Chumphon and Ranong as about 50 km wide. They report Wheatley's estimate that taking it saved about four months on a journey between South Asia and China, twelve months against sixteen.
“Kra Isthmus” enters the record as isthmus in Malay Peninsula. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Isthmus, isthmus and Malay can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q322356. VIAF identifies the subject as 315149737. The Library of Congress control number is sh91002144. Authority coordinates are 10.183, 98.883. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kra Isthmus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.