Myanmar (Burma): The Irrawaddy river basin dominates otherwise mountainous Myanmar, renamed in 1989 by the governing militaey regame. Sweeping along the Bay of Bangal, the low-laying Arakan yoma range, reemerges to the south as India's Andaman and Nicobar island. This costal range, as well as the undersea ridge on which the island lie, is formed from sediments scraped off the oceanic part of the Indian plate as it dives under eurasia.
Thailand: Fron the rain-fed tributaries in Thailand's northern mountains, the Chao Phraya river spreads sediments to create a fertile central plain. In the east, tectonic uplift pushed the khorat plateau as high as 3,000 feeton its southwest corner, though the average elevation of this thin-solied upland in only 600 feet. Teak and other valuable hardwoods once covered half of Thailand, which outlawed logging in 1989 to preserve its remaining forest cover-now, on a rebound, at 30 percent.