[seer]

While that could be considered true, isn't it the same as saying "playing the satar" is a shitty surrogate hobby for people who are too afraid to travel and explore other cultures?

A good hobby will positively affect one's live, be a source of personal pride and sense of accomplishment. You can be the guy who obsesses about metallurgy and makes the sharpest knifes in your basement. Consequently that gets you to brag about it to your referent group and make you feel a sense of joy, apart from the joy you feel when you do the crafting itself.

Similar with traveling - immersing yourself in foreign cultures and trying to understand them is very much akin to endeavouring to learn a new programming language, or starting an open source project to test out some cool tech. With luck you'll get something tangible (photos and videos of trip / git repo with cool code), will have the memory of the joy you felt with the exploration and will have something to talk about with your referent group.

Sure there are people who abuse traveling to make it for the status rather than for the joy, but isn't that true with everything?

In the end, if it brought you joy, and you didn't harm anyone, it would could be worthwhile to you. And an old folk saying I've heard ones said "whatever you eat and drink nobody can take away from you". Its the experience that matter.