I have traveled most of the world. I started in my early teens. On my own. I would say that no travel had any impact on me until I was past 30.
My readers know that I don’t believe that humans are capable of important new thought after age 23. Only about one out of 200 people are different from my observation. We are primates and learning occurs before adulthood.
Travel had no impact on me before an event at age 33. I remember my views. I saw most other people as diminished versions of Americans. Diminished in a variety of ways. The French were an arrogant version of Americans who loved dogs and prefer oral sex to genital sex. The Brits were a backward race who loved to argue, never listen and eat awful food. Everyone else was a variation on this line of thought.
I technically knew about culture from reading all the great cultural thinkers. It didn't sink in.
It was on a trip around the world at age 33 and a discussion with zen Abbott Baker roshi that opened my eyes. Baker roshi told me what he had been able to see in three years of living in Kyoto.
I arrived in Kyoto and my eyes began to open. Japanese sexuallity was different. I saw a three year old Japanese girl on a bus near me masturbating through her dress. When her mother saw me looking she desperately tried to get the girl to look out the bus window and stop what she was doing. Japanese don't say 'no' to children, they use distraction.
I was staying at a Japanese version of a Bed and Breakfast (Minshuku) that was run by a 50 year old woman. I noticed that every afternoon a teenage boy ( several different ones) would come to a small room in the house with her and ostensibly give her a massage. But it was much more than a massage as I could tell from the sounds and shadows. Older women comfortably have sex with younger men.
I wandered into a building one morning in a temple area, paid the door fee and joined about 15 men watching a sex show of some sort. Women wearing school clothes, or house wives costumes would come down the runway. Take off all their clothes and put them carefully in a basket; kneel down and masturbate for a few minutes, sometimes with a vibrator. They then spread their legs and passed out a few flashlights so the men in front could look in their vaginas. Then they would leave with their basket of clothes and a new woman would come out on the runway. Yes, strip, no tease.
From that point on, I began to see culture in a different light. Now I can see culture, the way I was taught to see it by Franz Boaz, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Whorf-Sapir and many others.
Can people see another culture just by getting off a boat in Barcelona for a few hours? Can they see another culture even in a few weeks staying in a small village? No. It is not possible. Travel is not broadening for 199 people out of 200 and that one out of 200 may miss it too.
I think it takes education combined with cognitive dissonance and a unique open mind to see another culture. Not travel itself.