My parents took me on trips ever since I can remember, so I have been bit by the travel bug my whole life. Luckily, I've been pretty fortunate to get/make opportunities for myself to travel.
Spent two summers in college working as an intern for an airline. Basically a 20 and 21 year old with free flights anywhere they had open seats. I would take a backpack with two sets of clothes to work on friday, find a place with open seats there and back and basically spend every weekend someplace different. Knocked out Buenos Aires, Rome, Costa Rica, Amsterdam, Munich, Vancouver, and Tampico that way.
After I graduated and got a "real" job, I basically volunteered to go on any trip that came up. A month in a small factory town in South Korea? Sure let's go (have done that twice). Two weeks on/two weeks off in Monterrey, MX? I'm in (did that for about a year). Need someone to go to India for a month? Hell yeah (did that 10 times).
My main strategy on all this is to immerse myself in the culture and experience as much as I can. As most have already mentioned learn some basic language and atleast try to speak it. With the trips being longer, I'm usually able to make friends with a local through work who is more than happy to show me their country. By my second trip to Mexico and India my friends were having their wives make extra lunches for me and taking me barhopping/clubbing/weekend trips/whatever with their friends.
The other strategy is don't go looking for trouble and you generally won't find it. I never felt unsafe walking around any of these places but also knew not to go somewhere shady unless a local was taking me there.
COVID and young kids put and end to all this (hopefully only for the next few years) but I definitely want to take my kids places so they can experience different things, learn to appreciate what they have, and see that for most of the world happiness is not found through materialistic goods/tangible items.