The “Third World” Is Not Your Classroom

I think these are good insights for anyone travelling abroad, especially those later in the career doing so for professional reasons.

It does no one any good to approach another country with a bias towards the experiences you've had in your own. Customers, markets, competitors all behave differently around the world. Those who do visit, especially countries in Asia, should see parallels between their own bias and bravado and that which stirred in colonialists centuries ago.