Two sets of twins. Fifty countries. Ten years in Vietnam.
I'm Marissa. In 2016 my husband Adam and I moved to Ho Chi Minh City with two-year-old twins for what was supposed to be a three-to-six-month work trip. We're still here. Along the way we had a second set of twins, which is not a sentence I ever expected to write.
Noa and Eyva are 11. Efi and Raya are 8. Between the six of us we've been to fifty countries, and the kids have grown up on motorbikes, in night markets, and on 24-hour flights home to Boston every summer. They go to school in Ho Chi Minh City, speak better Vietnamese than I do, and will tell you, honestly, which countries they'd never go back to.
@twinsonthegox2 is where I share what that actually looks like: where we go, what it costs, what went wrong, and how you pull it off with four kids and four carry-ons. Not the highlight reel. The useful part, with jokes.
It's become a community of about 83,000 parents on Instagram, most of them mothers in the US, UK, Australia and Canada who research and book the family trip, and roughly 1.5 million people watch our reels every month. We've been featured by CNN, Today, People, BBC, The Boston Globe, The Kelly Clarkson Show and Insider, and we've worked with Taiwan Tourism, Dubai Tourism, Hilton, Westin, Toyota and Huggies.
Before all this I built a bag brand (Rafi Nova, which is coming back) and I still run a manufacturing business here with Adam. So I'm picky about gear, honest about costs, and allergic to inspirational endings.
If you're a parent: the free guides, the packing list and the weekly letter are all at twinsonthegox2.com/links.
If you're a brand or tourism board: everything you need is at twinsonthegox2.com/work-with-us.
Want to work together?
I partner with tourism boards, hotels and family brands on campaigns that turn views into planned trips. The numbers, past partners and a short form are all on one page.