Geography of Thailand political development of this region. International access through the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand made the south a crossroads for both Theravada Buddhism, centered at Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Islam, especially in the former Pattani Kingdom on the border with Malaysia. Thailand's regions are divided politically into a total of 76 provinces plus Bangkok, which is a special administrative area. Thailand's climate is influenced by monsoon winds that have a seasonal character (the southwest and northeast monsoon). The southwest monsoon, which starts from May until October is characterized by movement of warm, moist air from the Indian Ocean
Provinces of Madagascar The new constitution of 1992 stated that the country should be divided into decentralised territorial entities, without going into detail. By law of 1994, three entity levels were defined: regions, departments and communes. The provinces were not mentioned in the law. After former president Didier Ratsiraka was re-elected in 1997, he 1998 introduced a revised constitution in which the still existing provinces were transformed to "autonomous provinces". Before that, no constitution had stated any details about the subdivisions of the country, leaving it to be ruled by law. The autonomous provinces were created in 2000. The official motivation was to