[kayo_20211030]

I can't but feel that there's a second, complementary point here.

Will you learn something about the place you visit? Probably. But, sure, not always. It's possible that reading the web might be as effective.

However, there's also the other side. To travel is to become educated about you. This experience cannot be replicated by reading the web. There's nothing quite as instructive as being blown away by the foreignness of another place, the language, the customs - the sheer strangeness of it to you. How you react to it, or manage it, or negotiate it are lessons worth learning. That's the education.

[yostrovs]

It seems like these days most places in Earth have become simply different versions of each other. How people dress, what they eat, what they know, their interests, and other such things are very similar almost wherever you go. Maybe traveling to central Africa or North Korea, or other very remote areas, would be radically different, but most travelers go to places where cell phones work and a portion of the public speaks English. Now traveling to another country is how traveling to another city was 60 years ago.

[yannyu]

Learning is effortful. People can travel and not learn anything, but people can not learn from many things they should learn from. Travel is something you can learn from no matter where you go, but you typically have to put in the effort.

[notahacker]

That isn't really true though, unless your itinerary is focused on the centre of major cities and you're determined to stay in chain hotels, eat international food and get taxis everywhere (if your main experience of travelling overseas is business, it might look like this)

Sure, Premier League branded football shirts turn up in the unlikeliest of places and it turns out that actually people don't wear what the internet says is their national dress all that much - that's one of the first things you learn when you travel - but there's plenty that's different, even if you can only communicate with the English speakers.

[andrepd]

It's difficult, and you detainly have to step foot outside the tourist trails for 5 minutes, which most tourists maybe don't. If you stick to the brunch places and the tourist trap museums, then yes. But the world is still incredibly diverse; if you travel you can experience this diversity, but you have to make an effort, including research and probably learning a bit of the language.

[lucyjojo]

i am sorry but no... this is not even remotely close to true.

even for very central cities. LA is very different from Paris which is very different from Tokyo.