Getting Away....

October was an extremely busy month for me at CARE Canada. I spent a lot of time out of the office and in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Atlanta and Ottawa visiting donors, Board members, partner agencies etc., talking about CARE's work and drumming up support. So while my upcoming trip to Vietnam to see CARE's work in the field meant more time 'out-of-the-office" it is a different kind of absence, another chance to connect to the people with whom we work. Field trips are get-away of a sort for me, trips that are both interesting professionally, but also necessary for me to enable me to better communicate our work to Canadians.

The only challenge is that getting to Vietnam takes at least 24hrs of non-stop travel! I always start these trips with a jet-lage prevention strategy - little personal tricks that I've developed over 20 yrs of international travel that help me beat jet-lag. The secret is trying to put your body "into" the time zone to which you are heading while you are travelling, rather than make your body adjust when you are there.

For me, that means knowing what I should be doing when I arrive (i.e. sleeping, or working) and planning accordingly. I knew that I would arrive in Hanoi at 8pm on Saturday evening. As we had an 8am start to the field on Sunday morning, it was critical that I arrived prepared for evening/sleep. My trip started at 8am in Ottawa on Friday - given the 24hr travel time, my body would actually be expecting to be awake, when i needed to be ready to sleep. So, that meant I had to stay awake for as much of the trip to Hanoi as possible. Leg one - no problem, Ottawa-Toronto is just an hour. A two hour lay-over in Toronto - no chance of falling asleep here either - besides, it was broad daylight! The Toronto-Hong Kong flight was more of a challenge - it is 15 hrs, 35 minutes, and most of the flight was in the dark - I did limit myself to four hours of sleep, and 11 hours of boredom. The final leg, after another 2hr layover in Hong Kong, was just a 1.5hr flight to Hanoi, so I stayed awake for that leg too. In the end, I did arrive at the hotel exhausted, and ready to sleep. A beer on the hotel patio, and then lights out!

But the jet-lag management doesn't stop there. A bit of night-time discipine is also required. Once the lights go out, I never turn on the TV, or check my blackberry, or even turn on a light in the room - even if I am wide awake and struggling to sleep. Doing so will wreck my chances of getting a good nights' sleep - guaranteed. I usually wake up multiple times this first night, but these tricks help me get back to sleep.

Finally, the next day it is critical to get out in the sunlight, to really force my body to accept that it is time to work, not time to sleep. A quick pre-breakfast walk, then standing in the sun whenever I can is the final step in the process. Bottom line, I'm ready to go at 8am, and make it through a full day to 9pm Sunday night. More about what we did on Sunday in the next post.