The one question I had reading this was... why then travel to the foreign country? You're enmeshed in the same basic experience you had in your domestic country, except you had to sit in a plane or on a train for hours to get there.

I would recommend, every once in a while, a complete disconnect. Tell people you'll be out of touch for a week, entirely. Get a topological map of an area, get a compass, get an altimeter, and get a GPS satellite reciever (no, not a cell phone, a device that GPS-triangulates your latitude/longitude from GPS satellite signals) so you can see where you are on your topo map. Carry cash only. The location could be a wilderness area that you backpack into, a small town on the seaside with a hotel reservation set aside for you, something like that. Walk around, read a book, take photos on a camera with no internet connectivity to look at later, write in your journal, eat a meal.

Terrifying thought, isn't it? Separation anxiety is a thing, in the digitally connected world.