Some couples in mid-career are taking long trips far from S'pore

They recall their experiences, sacrifices for the trips that lasted from a few months to a year

- Sharon Salim

Ms Adelle Ho and her husband Eugene Ang have a book and a documentary to thank for the one-year break they are taking from work to travel across South America.

The 100-Year Life, a book by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, talks about living outside the traditional way of a three-stage approach to one's working life: Study, work and retire.

Instead, it is about study, work and rest in multiple stages — and not only resting and retiring in old age, said Ms Ho, 31, who quit her job as a veterinarian in April 2024 to embark on the journey in May that year.

Mr Ang, a civil servant for about seven years, took no-pay leave.

The 34-year-old said: "Our lifespans are becoming longer, and we know that when it's our time to retire, it will be much later in life. Accepting that fact, we think it's healthier if we take breaks in between."

But why South America? The Netflix documentary Magical Andes captured the couple's hearts so much that it became a source of motivation for them to travel to the region.

Recently, they spent more than a week hiking through the Patagonian region in Argentina.

The couple and other travellers spoke to The Straits Times about why they packed their bags, what they had to do to make the trips work money-wise, and the sacrifices they have had to make.

Ms Ho and Mr Ang said they worked towards saving $30,000 each. Mr Ang said the figure was based on his experience holidaying in South America when he was a university student in the US.

"We thought US$2,000 (S$2,600) per month in South America each was something we could achieve based on what I knew, like the cost of the hostels," he said. So that works out to around $30,000 each for a year.

Ms Ho said: "During the pandemic, we were thinking of taking a career break. And that was the moment when we started saving up for this trip. It's not really impromptu or anything."

She added that it took them about three years to save up.