The Greatest Southeast Asian Civilization

the trading sultanate of Malacca, because I like trade oriented sea powers.  Certainly though the Thai would be my seconf fav though.

If you're looking for the one that was most impressive in its heyday, I would pick the Khmers.  Their great temple-city of Angkor outclassed anything their rivals built, and in the eleventh-early twelfth century, they ruled most of the Southeast Asian mainland:  Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and two thirds of Vietnam.  For a while they even had an army stationed at Thanh Hoa, less than a hundred miles south of Hanoi.  However, it did not get the press it deserved, because Marco Polo never went to Angkor; when he passed through Southeast Asia, the only stops he made were at Champa and Sumatra.  A Chinese ambassador, Zhou Daguan, visited Angkor and reported on it in the thirteenth century, but Westerners had to wait until the ruins of Angkor were discovered by a French explorer around 1860.

For runners-up, I would first pick the Burmese kingdom of Pagan, for building thousands of pagodas at its capital.  The pagodas weren't built according to any plan like Angkor; the kings simply felt they needed to do it, to gain good karma and to show they cared for the spiritual welfare of the people.  Still, the amount of work needed to build them is astounding, so they are impressive as a group of buildings.  Another good runner-up would be the Malayo-Polynesian people as a whole, because they sailed across both the Indian and Pacific Oceans, reaching and settling places very far away from Southeast Asia like Madagascar, Hawaii and Easter Island.

For modern nations in the region, I would give the prize to Thailand.  The Thais aren't as rich as Malaysia, Singapore or Brunei, but unlike the rest of the region, they have never been dominated by any outside power, allowing them to progress at their own pace.  Culture shock has been avoided, and traditional institutions like the monarchy and Buddhism have entered the modern world relatively intact, a remarkable accomplishment when other Southeast Asian countries have either slipped into seedy socialist decay or lost their identity in a maze of skyscrapers, fast-food restaurants, and the pop culture of the West.  And the population, which has grown from 17 to 62 million since World War II, is now increasing at a much safer rate of 1.4%, almost as low as that of the developed West.

Thai/Siamese or the Nanman (that's a chinese name don't know the name they had for themselfs)

The Nanman I'm thinking of were probably a burmese proto people.

Also barbarian is just a latin term that means non-Roman.

Edited by lars573

the majahpit dynasty, the last hindu/buddist dynasty of indonesia, controlled 80% of the indonesian archepeligo in the 1300's

Majapahit Empire. Because they DEFEATED the Mongols and created the largest empire in SE-Asia, and Javanese culture also blossomed during their reign!

My pick will be..

1. Kesultanan Melayu Melaka
2. Majapahit
3. Srivijaya

lars573 wrote: Thai/Siamese or the Nanman (that's a chinese name don't know the name they had for themselfs)

That would be "Thai" (the "h" is not pronounced), or "Siam" (Sa-yahm) until 1939.