U brought up a good point,..,,Suez canel is popular as it cuts down the time to travel dramatically. For the Straits of Malacca the distance is not that bad,,,and the cost so high to build, it might not be worth it. But the Ah tiongs have alot of money to throw,,they might just do it so that they get the technological expertise and their people have work,,,
If the Kra canel is built and its a series of interlocks, it will not justfiy the cost as like in the Panama and suez canals the ships have to wait at one end just to cross,I heard the waiting time is 1 week on average,,by the time they get over, they might as well have gone through the Straits,,,
Given what I know of the geography of the Isthmus of Kra, a canal is possible, but it will not be a single water canal like Suez. Instead it will be like the Panama Canal with many locks to take ships through. This has at least 2 impacts: construction will be very costly, and it will be time consuming for ships to go through.
So, we must look at how much time is saved with the building of the canal. A trip down the Straits of Malacca to Singapore probably does not take enough time to justify the expensive construction of the Kra Canal and the time it takes to clear it.
Also, while ports in the Gulf of Siam and Vietnam may look good on the map, the yearend NE monsoons have another opinion. Indeed, attempts to build ports anywhere along the shore of the South China Sea have been thwarted by the need for these ports to be closed for several months a year.