Travel, we’re told, is good for you. Broadens the mind, widens the education, deepens the flow of mutual love and understanding, and adds to the variety of goodies we eat at home. No downside.

As an expatriate of long standing – seeing other countries not as a tourist but as a resident – I have come to question this. I’m a teacher of English as a foreign language to adults, which has allowed me to live for years in Italy, Indonesia, Germany and France, working with expat colleages from all over the world. By and large, we find we have the same doubts about the deeper value of tourism.

Our students cover as wide a range of age, IQ, education, income, etc., as you can well think of. Everything from bricklayers to top politicians. Judging from their anecdotes, the tourist who prepares in any depth for the plunge into another culture is rarer than the Amur leopard (now down to about forty individuals in the wild). A quick dip into a guide book to discover the main sightseeing attractions, with luck a glance over the history of the country, some sampling of the local cuisine, and they’re back with little more than their snapshots and a peeling nose if they forgot the sun block.

Now, I’m not against the purely tourist holiday – just as long as no-one has any illusions that they know much about the country visited. What makes me uneasy are the visitors convinced that two weeks is enough to master the many intricacies of a strange land and people. For example, a student in France told me that after ten days in Thailand he felt he had come to understand Thai culture.

“Jean-Pierre,” I said, a touch wearily, “I can assure you that even inside Europe it takes two or three years to have any real understanding of a new country – particularly if you don’t speak the language well. How much longer then if you’re on a different continent?”

“Ah, but I talked to a couple of people there, and I’m not stupid. I understand their ideas.”

“For a start,” I pointed out, “people are individuals. How do you know their ideas were truly representative? What’s more, a culture doesn’t only consist of ideas, which are mostly conscious. How about the unconscious side, unarticulated but a hidden influence that colours every aspect of life?”

But he knew better (which probably says something about his unconscious) and continued to be an expert. He'd ticked the box and finished with it. The problem here is that he will probably never deepen his knowledge of Thai culture now, because he let himself start with answers rather than questions.

Our perception of other peoples is such a huge subject I’ll leave it for further articles. But I’d love to hear from other people about their thoughts and experiences in this context.