You can still find real cultures but you have to dig. Everywhere that tourists go have become upscale McDonald’s - identical the world over.
It’s what people want. They don’t actually want all the messy problems associated with actually interacting with a different culture, they just want to tell themselves they have.
“Assimilating local culture” is always the same stuff: you meet happy people with nothing, happy people with something, and unhappy people with nothing, and unhappy people with something. Turns out that - besides food and the nuances of local politics - the whole world is the same mesh. There is not much else to see. I had better conversations in Michigan with immigrant Uber drivers in a 15 minutes ride than spending one week in their country.
For a while it was fun to “go with the flow”, ultimately after so many experiences I realized that it is not the place that made the experiences fun, but the mindset. By changing my mindset I had an equal amount of fun experiences in my hometown without having to travel hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Sure..I can say this now after traveling quite a bit, perhaps we can call it experience and wiseness.
The only thing that is truly memorable are the landscapes, and the things you see: temples, pyramids, you name it. But even then, I would say that sightseeing doesn’t really mean that there is any expansive mixing with the local population. It’s a sterile experience, so to speak.
But it also sounds like you were a little burnt out on travel. I have lived abroad and found most regions of the world are quite different and have something unique and worth experiencing. Different countries are not just different themes on the same OS in my experience. People do live in meaningfully different ways. Out ability to take in new experiences that is finite and needs recharging though.
My wife and I went to Greenland just pre-covid, where almost no one speaks english, no signs are in english, and there was a very strong culture of which we were very much not a part. We were able to experience a small amount of it thanks to the kindness of our host. There is a program run by the official government tourism agency that allows Greenlandic residents to host tourists in their homes as a Bed & Breakfast. With patience and lots of english-danish translations we were able to communicate well enough to get around.
I would go back in a second and much prefer a place like that over a more generic setting like described in this article.
That said, when our two weeks there were up, it was very nice to meet a Canadian in the airport going home and hold a real conversation with someone besides my wife in my own language for the first time in a half a month.
When I travel, I desire to feel like I live there. An AirBnB with nice amenities, the occasional expensive cocktail(s), and some mainstream event, but the rest needs to be as authentic as possible. And that involves accepting some possible discomfort whether it be from language, cuisine, commute, etc. Where comfort isn't, experience is!
I did venture into these off-brand areas a few times, and it is sort of night and day; you know you are out of your element, and you want to go back to the tourist zones ASAP. You really gain nothing by going outside them. It's not "local color" it's "prey on the Gringos" time out there. It is not pretty.