LaughingDove Goes Travelling - SE Asia and Australia

Summarising



Just for some fun which some readers may find informative, I’ve decided to do a thorough round up of everything of the trip, mainly the wildlife seen and the total overall costs.


The total trip was 111 days which is one day short of 16 weeks or a week and a bit short of four months, from the 23rd of May to the 10th of September. During this time I visited five countries and went on 13 flights (meaning 13 individual planes, counting one trip with a connection as two).




Mammals:


I don’t have as detailed statistics for mammals as I do for birds, because my mammal listing involves only a ZooChat yearlist and a simple spreadsheet lifelist. Unlike with birds where I use the HBW system to keep my records.


The total trip list for mammals is 178 species which I’m extremely pleased with, I’d never have imagined seeing that many mammal species on this trip.


That number brings my total mammal lifelist 329 species (although the overall number is strictly following IUCN taxonomy, while the trip list number includes some extra splits. The trip list is still over 170 species following IUCN taxonomy) and the mammal year list for 2018 up to 193 species.




Birds:


Following HBW/Birdlife taxonomy I saw 903 species on this trip. With some additional splits that adds five to the total making 908 species. Just for interest, those splits are Collared + Torresian Kingfisher, Australian + Indochinese Swamphen, Golden + Western Whistler, Black-throated + Langbian Sunbird, and Blyth’s + Da Lat Shrike-babbler.


This brings my lifelist up to 1492 species following HBW/Birdlife taxonomy or 1503 species with some extra splits.


I can go into quite a bit of detail with exact numbers of birds seen at different places because I have details of all my records in the HBW My Birding system. Obviously all of these numbers follow the HBW/Birdlife taxonomy. I have 53 birdlists from the trip i.e. lists of all the birds I saw in a particular area, some of them are over multiple days e.g. I have all the species that I saw at Cat Tien National Park as one birdlist covering six days, or for example I have a birdlist for the Curtain Fig National Park which I birded for only about an hour. They’re generally just different geographical areas.


It would be excessive I think to go into details of each birdlist, but I will do breakdowns by country and some other things.


Conservation status:


Critically Endangered: Two species (Helmeted Hornbill and Yellow-crested Cockatoo (the latter introduced in Singapore so it doesn’t really count))

Endangered: 11 species

Vulnerable: 17 species

Near Threatened: 92 species


Country:


Thailand: 89 species, 5 lifers, 0 endemic, 3 birdlists,

Peninsular Malaysia: 202 species, 132 lifers, 1 endemic, 4 birdlists

Borneo: 248 species, 126 lifers, 39 endemic, 8 birdlists

Malaysia Overall: 361 species, 258 lifers, 40 endemic, 12 birdlists (this is not the sum of the number of species from each of the two above lists because of the overlap, but it is of course a sum of the numbers of lifers since there can’t be overlap in lifers)

Australia: 375 species, 125 lifers, 181 endemic, 31 birdlists (unfortunately HBW doesn’t have separate categories for different Australian states so I can’t easily do that breakdown into NT, QLD and WA which is a shame given that they have regional categories for other countries)

Singapore: 68 species, 8 lifers, 0 endemic, 3 birdlists

Vietnam: 185 species, 70 lifers, 4 endemic (several more near-endemic), 4 birdlists


Total: 903 species, 466 lifers, 210 endemic to their countries, 53 birdlists


Percentages for the trip list:


8.23% of the world’s bird species

48.1% of species that regularly occur in the countries I visited

50.1% of endemics to those countries

60.5% of species on my lifelist (i.e. the number of species seen on this trip as a percentage of my lifelist)

31.23% of my lifers (i.e. the number of species seen on this trip that were lifers as a percentage of my lifelist, subtly different wording but a significant difference)




Costs:


I have done the cost breakdowns for Malaysia and Vietnam already in this blog at the end of those parts of the trip, but I thought it might be fun to do the whole cost. It will of course be a large sum of money however I think it’s relatively cheap for an almost four month long inter-continental trip.


Flights:


Given how extremely variable flight prices are, this is of limited use to those looking into how much a trip like this is likely to cost them. However I thought it would be interesting anyway. I’ve given currencies in the currency of purchase (if different), £pounds, €euros, and $US dollars, and zlPolish Zloty (all at today’s exchange rate. I’m not quite pedantic enough to check the exchange rate on the day of purchase)


1) Warsaw-Bangkok, Finnair via Helsinki RETURN (all others are one-way) 2300zl = £475, €534, $624

2) Bangkok – KL, Malaysian Airlines 2750 THB = 312zl, £64, €72, $84

3) KL-Sandakan, Malaysian Airlines 440 MYR = 392zl, £81, €90, $106

4) Kota Kinabalu – Singapore, Air Asia $57 = 210zl, £43, €49,

5) Singapore-Darwin, Jetstar Asia SG$330 = 887zl, £183, €206, $241

6) Darwin-Cairns, Jetstar Australia AU$270 = 721zl, £149, €167, $195 – it’s worth noting that flights in and out of Darwin are all disproportionately expensive. Neither flight 5 or 6 is very long, but both come out very highly in expense

7) Cairns – Perth, Jetstar Australia AU$240 = 636zl, £132, €147, $172

8) Perth – Singapore, Scoot, SG$165 = 444zl, £92, €103, $120

9) Singapore – Saigon, Jetstar Asia, SG$145 = 390zl, £80, €90, $106

10) Saigon – Bangkok, Jetstar Pacific 1.6ml VND = 255zl, £53, €59, $69


Total for all flights: 6540zl, £1330, €1500, $1750, AU$2430


So that’s clearly a lot of money. But it’s also a lot of flights. I should point out that the Warsaw-Bangkok return flight accounts for over a third of the total flight costs.


Land costs:


Of the five countries I visited, three were done completely on my own which were Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam so these are most straightforward and I’ll do them first:


Malaysia, 41 days: RM6800, 6050zl, £1270, €1440, US$1680, AU$2260

Singapore, 7 days: SG$803, 2100zl, £450, €500, US$586, AU$815

Vietnam, 15 days: VND9.1ml, 1450zl, £300, €337 US$389, AU$547


Thailand and Australia are not as straightforward as that because the vast majority of both places were not paid for by me because I was with relatives. Of my own money, I spent less than 1000baht in Thailand on just minor bits and pieces including a couple of taxis, a SIM, and some incidental food costs.


In Australia the things I paid for on my own were a day in Darwin (not including accommodation) where I spent about AU$25, a day in Cairns (all expenses) where I spent about AU$100, and the trip to Rottnest where I spent about AU$175 ($75 ferry, $50 accommodation, $50 food+bus). Then there’s another roughly $50 on miscellaneous food, transport and tickets.


These numbers are obviously useless for anyone reading this, but because I want to do an overall number of how much the trip cost me personally:


Thailand, 8 days: THB300, 34zl, £7, €8, US$9 AU$13 clearly this is negligible

Australia, 37 days: AU$350, 928zl, £192, €215, US$250 which is certainly not insignificant but is a small proportion of what it would have cost me to do everything myself. If I did as much as I did in Australia with the same travel style as Malaysia, Singapore, or Vietnam it would have been many thousands of dollars.


Total land costs: 10500zl, £2170, €2440, US$2850, AU$3960


Other costs:


The main obvious thing in this category is travel insurance. The cost for full cover for the entire duration and all five countries with World Nomads (=Bupa Global) was 1680zl, £350, €390, US$456, AU$634


It’s worth noting that I ended up getting €146 back from that in claims.


Another significant cost is all the vaccinations that I had before this trip. However I’ve had them now and I won’t need them again for future trips so I’m not going to include that.


And there’s also the cost of the stuff bought beforehand. Much of that, like leech socks, a mosquito net, my backpack etc. will be reused on my next trip. Other stuff like shoes, some of the clothes, and a phone were broken on the trip and should probably be considered part of the cost of budget travel. Had I stayed in fancy hotels, paid for laundry, taken private cars, etc. there may have been less wear and tear. But this is complicated to estimate and work out so I’m ignoring those costs too. So the total costs are flights, land costs in each country, and travel insurance.



Total costs: 18,000zl, £3730, €4200, US$4900, AU$6800



That’s clearly a large absolute sum of money. I don’t feel that it’s an absolutely astronomical cost for almost four months of inter-continental travel but you can all think for yourselves about how much that is. It’s worth noting that prior to the trip I had estimated the cost at 25,000zl meaning I spent about 70% of what I had anticipated needing so that’s quite good.



Cost per bird species: 19.80zl, £4.09, €4.63, US$5.40, AU$7.49



Cost per mammal species: 101zl, £21, €24, US$27, AU$38



And finally, pictures:

I took a total of 30,019 photos (including my phone and DSLR camera) totalling 206GB

Thailand: 2252 pictures, 12.5GB
Peninsular Malaysia: 5422 pictures, 37.5 GB
Borneo: 5533 pictures, 41.7GB
Australia: 9565 pictures, 67.8 GB
of which
Northern Territories: 4090 pictures, 27.1GB
Queensland: 3080 pictures, 23.1GB
Western Australia: 2395 pictures, 17.5GB
Singapore: 4509 pictures, 28GB
Vietnam: 2739 pictures, 18.3GB


So clearly lots of pictures to go through and pictures to upload too which I'm in the process of doing. But otherwise, thus concludes my travel blog. I hope you have enjoyed it.

 

For a young person I understand that is a lot of money. When you look back on this in ten or twenty years you will be amazed at how much you were able to see for a relatively modest investment.

Some say that travel is the best investment you can make in life experience. You have invested very wisely.

 

Agree entirely. A remarkable trip and an investment you will look back on with satisfaction for the rest of your life.

 

Thanks for the comments (and generally throughout this thread, thanks for the messages everyone, I do appreciate it).

The thing about paying for experiences like this is that there's no way of measuring the absolute value of them, but I don't think there's much else that I could have done that would have been as worthwhile as that or taught me as much. Or to use the cliched phrase that I generally dislike but is probably accurate, 'developed me as a person'.

A cost comparison that I can't help but be drawn to is with the £9000 per year university tuition fees in the UK. Although I don't start for another couple of weeks, I already have my doubts about whether I'll benefit as much from a term at university as I did from this trip.

 

I've now finished uploading pictures from the trip to the galleries. These can be found in the following places:

Malaysia:
Malaysia - Wildlife | ZooChat
Malaysia - Other | ZooChat
Lok Kawi Wildlife Park | ZooChat
Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre | ZooChat
Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre | ZooChat
Zoo Negara | ZooChat
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/kuala-lumpur-bird-park.639/

Australia:
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/australia-wildlife.643/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/australia-other.545/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/territory-wildlife-park.3055/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/crocodylus-park-zoo.677/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/crocosaurus-cove.2571/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/cairns-aquarium.3092/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/wildlife-habitat-port-douglas.1574/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/cairns-wildlife-dome.1028/

Singapore:
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/singapore-wildlife.1179/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/singapore-other.1178/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/marine-life-park.2174/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/singapore-zoo.516/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/river-safari.1945/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/singapore-night-safari.554/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/jurong-bird-park.518/

Vietnam:
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/vietnam-wildlife.2165/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/saigon-zoo-and-botanical-gardens.2169/

Thailand:
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/thailand-wildlife.1185/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/thailand-other.954/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/suan-palm-farm-nok.3240/
https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/categories/bangpra-wildlife-breeding-centre.3242/

Alternatively, all the pictures are also uploaded to my travelblog.org page where they can be found attached to the relevant blog post from when the pictures where taken. All of the blog posts, with the pictures, from this trip in chronological order can be viewed here: https://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/BirderWilliam/Trips/33129

 

I just looked at this thread, and I think compared to similar trips you did very well animal-wise and cheaply, too.

Especially that it was apprarently your first significant independent overseas trip.