History and scenery meet at Southeast Asia's shipwreck diving spots

Shopping in Singapore, looking down from the Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, taking in the massive ancient temples in Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and Borobudur on Java: Tropical Southeast Asia is hardly short of things to do for tourists or places to go.

Some of the region's best attractions are not on land or even above the sea-level, however. Diving is another reason Southeast Asia is popular with tourists, and East Timor, Raja Ampat in Indonesia, Thailand’s Similan Islands and Sipadan near Malaysian Borneo are among the world's best-regarded locations.

But the region arguably even has untapped potential for divers, or at least those who don’t mind having shipwrecks making up the submarine scenery alongside rainbow-hued coral and glimmering shoals of fish.

Recognising the potential heritage value of such wrecks, Indonesia’s government in 2018 established a conservation zone around the Perth, an Australian warship that was sunk during the World War II Battle of the Sunda Strait and now lies around 40 metres below the surface of the sea separating Java and Sumatra.

In a recent article for History Today, the University of Sydney’s Natali Pearson said the region’s sunken ships "are easily overlooked in the legacy landscape of the Second World War," particularly when compared with wrecks from the period in European waters.

And in Southeast Asia there are at least 2,000 World War II-era wrecks, many of them unexplored.

While some are at depths beyond the reach of even submarines, others are within range of popular beaches and resorts and have been scouted by divers - some more motivated by scavenging for valuables than by sight-seeing.

Among the region’s more popular shipwrecks for divers are the USAT Liberty, around 30 meters underwater off the coast of Bali, while Coron Bay in the Philippines holds what's left of 12 Japanese warships from World War II.

A more recent addition to the list is the MS King Cruiser, a car ferry that sank between Phuket and the Phi Phi Islands - another popular destination in Thailand - in 1997.

All 561 passengers were rescued after the boat's hull was torn open by underwater rocks. The wreck has since become a popular draw for divers visiting southern Thailand.