> reeling off facts from wikipedia is not the same at all as traveling to a country.

That's not the premise of the article, it's just an example. The premise is that knowledge depends on the source of information and it's quality, and travelling is usually a rather poor source on it's own.

> the tastes, interactions, trash on the sidewalk, mysterious odors, miasamatic airs, overheard conversations all add up to a thousand times what the two paragraph history of vietnam gives you.

So what history did you learn from the smells? What did you learn about the problems and philosophy of the people? This reads more like a delussion. Travelling a locations and talking to people is valuable, but this is mainly experience, not education. What you collect is the public picture of a place and their people, not the private parts they only talk about to people they really trust. Unless you live for some decades at a place, you will not be able to learn and understand the things you can gain from a well written article explaing something and it's history. Personal experience is a lousy educator, because its lacking on so many neccesary details.