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Comment by terribleperson | Hacker News Reader

The travel risks of contacts are manageable. Always travel with a fresh spare pair, a contacts case (to store the old pair), and a pair of glasses in a hard case. The glasses go in your personal bag, not your luggage.

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If the risk management strategy of contacts involves having a pair of glasses on hand, why not jump straight to that (unless you don't like glasses in the first place and only use them if all else fails)?

Then again, my eyesight isn't bad enough for me breaking my glasses on a holiday to be a potential problem. I've never broken any of my pairs before, and even if they were lost, I'm still able to read and get around. It's just more unpleasant to do so. But I still prefer glasses and wear them pretty much at all times.

I've used contacts for about 20 years and I prefer them to glasses doing anything active and generally traveling. I would be very worried about navigating the world without being able to read things 3 feet away with my prescription of -4 so I always travel with a pair of glasses.

Before I got LASIK, I wore contacts but travelled with glasses. There are a huger variety of reasons that you might use contacts even if you have your glasses available. In fact, everyone I know with contacts also always has a pair of glasses that goes with them on travels.

In my case I worked onboard tall ships. Contacts let me be on deck in inclement weather without worrying about spray, fog, or losing a pair of glasses, let me use any pair of sunglasses instead of a ~$250+ pair of prescription glasses, as well as things like diving and snorkelling without needing a $150 prescription mask.

You can get cheap glasses from China. I found on reddit people swearing by zenottic on aliexpress and got some glasses for 20-30$. Nothing to scream about, plastic but they do the job really well. I already lost one pair in the sea, which would have been bad if I had 200$+ glasses.

I wear contacts in water or if I lose my glasses, but try to use glasses most of the time to let my eyes breathe.

Contacts in water? A friend of mine did that and got sand in them. Really bad. It was a long time ago so I forgot details, i.e. why not just discard them?

Try having vision worse than 20/200 and getting around without glasses. When I traveled, pre-contacts, I always packed a spare and a repair kit. With contacts, I pack one pair of glasses, a repair kit and spare contacts, its essentially the same prep and experience. Except now I have peripheral vision and can wear whatever sunglasses I have on hand. They also don't fog up like glasses do, which makes the transition in and out of buildings in hot, humid climates where AC is prevalent less annoying.

But then you need to make sure you have access to clean water in order to put in your lenses.

I don't use water to put in lenses. It might be troublesome to clean my hands without clean water, though...

I assumed GP meant for the handwashing part. General advice I've always seen is to wash your hands before touching contacts.

Yes, exactly this.

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