LAYING on a sun lounger beside a private pool, surrounded by lush tropical foliage, Plum Leigh reaches for her laptop to start work. But the 27-year-old, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, is not on a working holiday - she’s ditched the UK for life in South Africa and says the cost of living leaves her quids in. “I pay £450 a month for a two-bedroom garden cottage with a pool.
I can work from the pool or the beach,” secondary school tutor Plum tells The Sun, from her home in Johannesburg. “I teach students in Britain and I am tens of thousands of miles away. I am saving thousands a month from fleeing England.
“I’m doing a postgraduate degree in teaching. It’s costing me £1.5k instead of the £10k I’d pay back home.
It is a no brainer. “I can run my business from my cottage, enjoy great weather and eat out for a fraction of the price back home. “Cocktails cost £4 quid here instead of £15 in London.
I am saving double what I did in Britain. “I will be able to put a deposit down on a house next year. In England that would be impossible.
” Last year, 33,000 Brits chose South Africa as a holiday destination and 125,000 more visited in the first quarter of this year, as the weak rand ensured low prices. Over 200,000 ex-pats have made it home. From her Johannesburg cottage, Plum is just 90 minutes away from a Plumari Reserve, where safari lovers can see rhinos, lions, elephants, giraffes and buffalo in the wild.
Single Plum left university with a £50k debt and w.
