By Shaun Cameron
In 1677, the Thai monarch Narai the Great had a dream. He sent an engineer south to investigate the possibility of excavating a vast waterway through the narrowest part of the Malay Peninsula, known as the Kra Isthmus, with the hope of opening a direct trade route between Siam and Burma – imagine a Suez of Southeast Asia, if you will.
The engineer returned with the unhappy verdict that the project was impossible. But this idea of a “Kra Canal” has persisted through the centuries since.
