Bangkok, the “City of Angels” at the mouth of the Chao Phya River in the Gulf of Siam, with its 2.6 million inhabitants is one of the most exotic cities in the world. Extremes meet at all levels. Be it in the cultural area, in the architecture, with the people or up close when eating – but nevertheless and wherever we encounter the foreign exotic, we immediately feel in good hands.
Despite the incredible hustle and bustle of this metropolis, people always manage to keep their gentleness and friendliness. The cultural and religious buildings are also islands of grandeur, tranquility and harmony. Recognizing these contrasts, experiencing and enjoying them again and again is reason enough to visit this country and the city or to experience them again in a new and different way.
Geography
According to topmbadirectory, the territory of Thailand occupies a considerable part of the land area of Southeast Asia and extends southeast of the last foothills of the Himalayas to the Malay Peninsula and encloses the Gulf of Thailand, a marginal sea of the South China Sea. The shape of the land surface of Thailand is vaguely reminiscent of an elephant’s head. The maximum extension in north-south direction is 1770 kilometers, in east-west direction 780 kilometers. The border is 5326 kilometers long. The coast is 1878 kilometers long in the Gulf of Thailand and 937 kilometers in the Andaman Sea. Overall, Thailand has an area of 513,115 km². Thailand is located between 5° 37′ and 20° 27′ north latitude and between 97° 22′ and 105° 37′ east longitude.
Climate
The climate is tropical-monsoonal. Average annual temperatures range from 28°C in the south to 19°C at Doi Inthanon, Thailand’s coolest point in the extreme north. The seasonal fluctuations are small everywhere; while three seasons can be identified in the north (relatively cool between November and February, very hot with temperatures well above 35 °C from March to May and hot from May to November), in the south the temperatures are about the same all year round. The daily amplitudes are between 6 °C and 10 °C in the south and in the wet season in the north, in the dry season in the north the daily amplitude is between 9 °C and 19 °C.
Flora
The natural vegetation of Thailand consists of forest; a forest cover of 75 to 80 percent was specified for the year 1960. Depending on the source, this value has fallen to 18 to 26 percent to date, which can be attributed to strong population growth, measures to improve the quality of life and strategic road construction and the associated colonization in eastern Thailand during the Vietnam War.
History
The Thai may not have immigrated to what is now Thailand until the 11th century. They founded several kingdoms that were unified over the following centuries. However, there was no national state of Thailand until the 19th century, but the many local principalities (Müang) remained and were only obliged to pay tribute to the rulers in the center. These networks of muang dependent on a ruler are called mandalas. Their sphere of influence had no fixed boundaries, but could expand and contract over time. In the era of colonialism, Thailand managed to maintain its independence and developed into a modern centralized state. After World War II, Thailand was often ruled by the military as a dictatorial rule, at the same time it experienced an economic boom and developed into one of the economically leading states in Southeast Asia. Domestic political disputes have repeatedly shaken society in recent years.
Population
Censuses have been conducted in Thailand since 1911 and the National Bureau of Statistics, working with many international organizations, was one of the richest sources of statistical data in Asia in the 1980s. As of mid-2016, Thailand’s population was estimated at 68.2 million people. Thailand is one of the 20 most populous countries in the world. In 1850, however, only 5.5 million people lived in Thailand, in 1911 8.2 million, in 1960 26 million and in 1987 about 53 million. Population growth, which was 3.2 percent per year in the 1960s, fell to 0.34 percent by 2015. Around 50.4 percent of the people lived in cities, 49.6 percent in the countryside. The Bangkok metropolitan area is the most densely populated with 4000 inhabitants per km²;
Culture
The culture of Thailand is heavily influenced by the cultures of those peoples who inhabited the country before the arrival of the Thai and its neighbors. These are primarily the Indian, Cambodian and Chinese cultures. Religious ideas from Buddhism, but also from Hinduism, ancestor worship, ethnic religions and Chinese folk beliefs are deeply rooted in the thoughts and actions of the Thai people. This is expressed, for example, in the fact that the head is the most sacred part of the body. Feet, on the other hand, are considered dirty; stepping over someone or grabbing something with your foot is considered an insult.
