No.
TL;DR answer:
Level of development of countries in Southeast Asia:
- Singapore
- Brunei
- Malaysia
- Thailand
(Note: Singapore is a city-state. Brunei is a tiny oil-rich Sultanate with a population of only 400,000 people, less than 10% of Singapore's population)
Long answer:
The OP might have confused the definition of “Southeast Asia” to encompass only Indochina. Also, many people in the West are only familiar with Thailand in Southeast Asia because it is such a famous country for tourism. Singapore may now be well-known after Crazy Rich Asians, but almost no one knows about Malaysia & Brunei.
For such questions, Google & Wikipedia are useful. A quick search into economic parameters- Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita (nominal & PPP) will tell you the answer:
(EDIT) In response to some Quorans stating that GDP per capita is a somewhat inaccurate measure for a country wealth & development levels, I have included the Human Development Index (HDI), which is known to be a better yardstick, for the Asia-Pacific region, which includes the aforementioned Southeast Asian countries (highlighted in yellow):
As many have mentioned, city-state Singapore is the most developed country in Southeast Asia. In fact it is the third richest country in the world (by GDP per capita PPP).
Oil-rich Brunei, a country with a population of less than 10% of Singapore, comes second.
Malaysia, the first full-fledged country in the list comes in third.
Only then did Thailand come in fourth place.
Funnily enough, some ignorant tourists have the audacity to say that Thailand is more developed than Malaysia because Thailand has more ‘energetic vibes'.
Nope, having a livelier party scene with cheap beers & horrendous traffic with street food carts don't measure the level of development of a country.
Whilst Bangkok Metropolitan Region appears more developed than Greater Kuala Lumpur, it has almost twice of Greater KL's population.
Development in Thailand is also Bangkok centric- Greater Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city, does not even exceed one million residents.
In contrast, Malaysia’s development is more urbanised & spread out. It has two urban agglomerations- Greater Penang & Iskandar Malaysia (Greater Johor Bahru), which exceed Greater Chiang Mai’s population. It also has about 20 towns which exceed a population of 300,000 residents- the population of Thailand's third largest city, Nakhon Ratchasima (Korat). Most, if not all, having better infrastructure.
This is considering that Malaysia's population (32 million residents) is only half of Thailand's population (69 million).
(Edit) However, Thailand does excel in a few areas more than Malaysia, such as tourism and its related industries like retail. As of 2019 Bangkok has an Apple Store, Takashimaya, Taco Bell, & Jamie's Kitchen whereas Kuala Lumpur hasn't had them yet. Thai 7-Elevens are top-notch.
(Edit: I love Thailand and I go there for holiday every few months or so and have Thai friends, so don't bash me for being anti-Thailand)
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