fortela wrote:guess they have not been to Palawan islands or the other 7600 islands of Philippines, let alone the 20,000 islands of indonesia
That's the main set back when your country is an archipelago which is made of hundreds and thousand islands because it will always be battered with natural calamities like typhoon, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, tsunamis etc. Examples of those countries are Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Polynesia and Micronesia etc. That's the reason why for over billions or millions of years, these islands didn't have the chance to form all together as a big country like the USA, China, Russia, Brazil etc to name a few which are even a part of a big land mass in the world.