Two Spanish biologists embarked on an exciting two-month backpacking trip to get to know the wildlife of southeast Asia. A limited budget and a long bucket list were the main forces shaping the itineraries. Our main focus was to get to know places and the intricacies of nature watching in the region, so we focused on visiting essential places in different ecoregions and countries, rather than on getting extremely long lists or looking for tough mega species. We planned most of the itinerary and accommodation in advance and mostly looked for birds by our own means, without guides or rental cars.

This is the first of a series of reports trip and field notes about our time birding in Singapore and West Malaysia in the Malay Peninsula; Sabah (Malaysia) and Brunei in Borneo; Palawan and Manila in the Philippines; Vietnam; Cambodia, and Thailand.

After landing in Singapore on 6th July, we spent few days to discover several good-quality urban nature spots in the Lion City while deploying some time for sightseeing. A night bus got us off the island nation towards Kuala Lumpur, where we followed a similar plan after several fantastic birding days in the nearby highland area of Bukit Fraser or Fraser’s Hill. We continued to Borneo with a flight to Sandakan airport on 13th July.

Our time in Singapore was absolutely indulgent and gave us the chance to get familiar with most of Asian bird species at a proper pace for our first time in the continent, while connecting with several local goodies that would be harder elsewhere in our itinerary and, indeed, we did not see again on our trip. This included pied imperial-pigeon in the fantastic Singapore Botanic Gardens and chestnut-bellied malkoha and red-crowned barbet in Bukit Timah. The integration between the city and the forest in Singapore was inspirational.

West Malaysia provided the first outings in the rainforest in Bukit Fraser, where we slowly got the hang of the particularities of looking for birds in this ecosystem. This resulted in great views of local specialties such as red-headed trogon, fire-tufted barbet or black-browed barbet, while also connecting with stunners as Malaysian eared-nightjar or rusty-naped pitta.

Kuala Lumpur was a vibrant, welcoming city but in a very different way than Singapore. Amidst the city bustle, we connected with black-thighed falconets or banded woodpeckers in urban green areas.

The first week of our trip yielded a total of 118 bird species between the two countries. This stretch provided some of our favorite birding infrastructures of the trip and we left the area extremely hyped about many nature destinations we left unvisited. Singapore and especially West Malaysia are true gems for watching birds and wildlife in general, and especially so for the backpacker and budget traveller.