The Stories Behind: The parents who took their 4-year-old son out of preschool to go on a 2-year world tour
SINGAPORE — Instead of attending preschool like other children his age, four-year-old Atlas Wong, who was named after his parents' passion for travel, is doing his learning while flying across the globe.
Over the last four months, he has travelled to 22 countries including Belgium, France, Greece and Turkiye. His jet-setting life will continue until he is six, with destinations such as Canada, Japan and the United States still to come.
His parents, civil servants Rakcent Wong, 35, and Carol Tan, 36, came up with the 50-country list after they promised each other that they would take their child on "worldly adventures" before he started formal school.
Mr Wong, who like his wife is on a two-year sabbatical from his job, said: "Atlas means a bundle of maps. Since we already planned to travel around the world, we thought this would be an appropriate name (for him)."
Before Atlas was born, Mr Wong and his wife frequently embarked on short trips overseas. With every trip, the couple said that they learned more about themselves and the cultures in the places they visited.
He added: “Travelling has such a strong transformative power, and we want to gift it to our child despite people telling us that we should stop travelling after having a kid.”
When I first heard about their two-year sojourn after chancing upon their joint Instagram account Engaging Atlas, I was in awe. The idea of taking time off from work and life to travel seemed so out of reach for an average working adult.
Yet here they were, somehow managing to "live the dream" with their young son, determined to show him places I might not get to visit in my lifetime.
Apart from myself, more than 11,500 followers eagerly tune in to get a glimpse of their adventures through the account, meticulously curated by Atlas' parents.
Every day, the couple sets out with their phone camera, capturing various sights, sounds and experiences.
Each video is marked with a country flag and the day of their travel so that viewers may easily track when and where the family has been.
That was why when I arranged to meet them online on a FaceTime video-call, I had a question that I was dying to ask: How in the world are they able to do all this?
To my question, Ms Tan said that their two-year trip is being funded from their savings, which they accumulated from living frugally for five years from the time before Atlas was born.
“We set this five-year target because we thought Atlas should be more independent by then.
“He should be able to eat on his own and walk a bit further, and when we come back, it would be just in time for primary school. So we felt this was the right time,” Mr Wong said.
The family was in Cyprus at the time when we spoke. This week, they are in Nepal.
After doing their sums, the couple calculated that the trip would cost them an average of S$150 a day, inclusive of the cost of flight tickets.
Mr Wong admitted that it was tough at the start because he had to really scrutinise his wife’s finances.
“She appreciates the finer things in life,” he said with a laugh.
Ms Tan said that before they made this decision to travel for an extended period of time, she led a more indulgent lifestyle and had no qualms about splurging on cafe food and branded bags every now and then.
“After that, I realised I wasn’t truly happy even when I spent on these items. Travelling, however, gave me a different perspective on life. So I changed my mindset to focus on valuable experiences instead of materials, and I managed to save up for our financial goal of travelling,” she added.
The couple do not own a car and have been living in a four-room Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat since 2016, before Atlas was born.
They mostly ate cheap hawker food and relied on public transport to get around, and made it a point to take the cheapest flights available over the course of their two-year journey.
Even with such decisions, it was a trade-off that was unpalatable to some, the couple told me.
“Our parents were very supportive because they knew how free-spirited and adventurous we are. But our friends, especially our colleagues, told us we should stop our adventures now that we have a kid," Ms Tan said.
These comments did not deter the couple but spurred them instead to push ahead with their plans, even if it meant forgoing income and the ability for Atlas' grandparents to see him in person for two years.
THE TRIP BEGINS
Their journey started on Jan 17 when they left Singapore for Greece. The couple decided that this would be their first location for practical reasons — they managed to snag cheap flight tickets for about S$300 a person.
There, they visited the black sand beach in the island of Santorini, where the sand is made of volcanic material and lava fragments, and witnessed the sunset at the picturesque village of Oia.
Since then, they have visited more than 20 places in Europe, including Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
These were places that I had only read about or seen on television, but never in real life.
Truth be told, I was more amazed than envious, because it wasn't that I couldn't afford to travel to these dreamy locales, but it was just an unimaginable thought that I would have to set aside my commitments to be abroad.
Also, for a start, travelling to all these places with a young child in tow sounded tiring.
However, as Mr Wong and Ms Tan regaled me with tales of their epic travels, it was hard to tell that they were suffering from any travel fatigue.
Right before our FaceTime session at 1pm Singapore time, the pair told me that they had not slept in 24 hours.
The couple had just reached Cyprus — it was 8am over there — after braving a red-eye (overnight) flight from Turkiye the night before.
Yet, to my eyes, I could hardly detect any homesickness or exhaustion, as the couple excitedly shared how their next steps would take them to Nepal, where they plan to stay for a month to maximise their travel visa validity period there.
As to exactly where they will be, Mr Wong said that they have no concrete itinerary or plan in place, except that they have to be in Kenya by July because that is the best time for a safari visit.
At this point, I thought about how the longest I've been away from home for travels was two weeks. I cannot fathom ever needing to extend a trip just so I could get the most out of my travel visa.
After all, I am not someone who can live without Asian cuisine for more than two days.
Mr Wong and Ms Tan said that coping with the lack of Singapore food was one of the hardest moments they had to experience during their global adventure. Two weeks after departing Singapore, Atlas asked for char siew (barbecued pork) rice.
“Char siew rice was his comfort food because we would have it once every three to four days. It was so easy to 'dabao' (Chinese for take-away) when the stall was just downstairs," Ms Tan said, recalling that this happened while they were in North Macedonia.
“I felt so bad because I couldn’t find char siew rice for him. His diet was my biggest concern.”
Refusing to be defeated by this, she then sought to level up her cooking skills in order to whip up Singapore meals for Atlas and her husband whenever they wanted a taste of home.
BEING GOOD PARENTS
To the couple, the most challenging part of their journey was not related to finances, pausing their careers or navigating new places. Rather, it was having to be a good parent to Atlas while coping with travel anxieties.
"Parenting is always a challenge," Mr Wong said. "Balancing it with travel and other responsibilities adds an extra layer of difficulty, especially when we're on our own out here."
He and his wife admitted that the journey so far has not been all butterflies and rainbows. "But we embraced the journey as a family, knowing it would be the most rewarding part," Mr Wong added.
At the end of the day, the trip is not meant for the couple to indulge themselves, they said. It was conceived from the start to give Atlas an enriching adventure.
To this, Mr Wong recalled how, in Lyon, France, their son saw the exposed mechanism of a cable car and decided to pepper his parents with questions about it.
Far from being put off, Mr Wong said that hearing the boy's questions put to rest any doubts that they had when they first decided to embark on their journey.
“Atlas stood there and watched cable cars go up and down for a good 10 minutes. He asked specific questions like, ‘How does this work? Why is it like this?’
“We thought this would be a good skill that he could use further in life because when you learn things, you need to know the reasons why. And when you’re curious, that’s when your knowledge will expand,” Ms Tan said.
Asked if she was worried about how Atlas may fit into Singapore's primary school system when he reaches six, Ms Tan admitted that her son might not be "used to sitting down".
“But with this sense of wonder he has shown throughout the trip, I’m sure he will become an effective learner when he’s older,” she said.
I wish I could've seen Atlas on camera, but he was sound asleep at their lodging in Cyprus given that their red-eye flight was just hours before.
I couldn't help thinking how it was so good that he has parents who believed that life lessons are best learned through exploration and exposure, and who were willing to pause their own lives to grant him a memorable childhood.
It should go without saying that such a sojourn may not be for everyone, but a little part of me wonders if I would have had a different worldview had I gone on such a trip at Atlas' age.
As the famed American zoologist Jack Hanna once said: "The world is the true classroom. The most rewarding and important type of learning is through experience, seeing something with our own eyes."
