Or meet up with the locals, which can be a real treat (though you may wonder about health codes in rural China as a result).
Though again, getting to know random locals demands a certain amount of time to linger, and if you are traveling on business your relationship with the co-worker locals is always going to be a bit artificial: you aren’t YOU, you’re that lady from the central office or whatever. And a LOT of jobs that involve international traveling involve some degree of audit: you send people from the central office to teach people how they should be doing things and to make sure they are doing those things correctly. Even if people are all very good about being professional and constructive, that relationship discourages letting your hair down together.
And it takes a certain personality type to go alone into an enviroment where you don’t speak the language and don’t know anyone and either amuse yourself alone or make friends. It’s something to be aware of if you are contemplating a career that involves international travel.
Which is why it’s alwys nive to belong to a globe-spanning non-work community or two, such as Esperantio or… the SDMB. 
Nice. I meant, ‘nice’.
Sigh.
The advantages of such a non-work community is that you can call ahead and hopefully have someone local meet you at your destination, and give you the non-tourist tour. I’ve even done it.
Get a rotational job overseas. The company pays for your ticket between where you normally live and where you work. Depending on the worth of the ticket, you can change it to go pretty much where ever you want to.
My mom was just telling me about a guy at the last company she worked for, whose entire job was to scout locations/hotels/excursions for the lavish “reward trips” that the company gave to its best salespeople. So he got to go to Dublin, Rome, Greece, etc., etc., and check out the hotels, try all the fun touristy excursions and stuff, choose the best ones, and then when he got back, he designed and arranged the trips for the top-performing sales people. Apparently he got to take his wife along with him for his trips (I assume they didn’t have young kids.)
To me, this falls into the category of “incredibly cool jobs that your high school guidance counselor never tells you about.” Seriously, what a lucky bastard! Anyway, I have no idea how you would go about finding a job like that, but if you figure it out, let me know!
Hotel auditor, providing it’s for an international chain, may be an option. Alternatively, a friend’s wife recently trained as an air stewardess; it’s very hard work, apparently, but plenty of time off and incredible discounts on air fares.
Broadly speaking there are 2 categories of jobs that will involve international travel. One category is jobs that are international in nature - airlines, international development, state department, etc. The other is being a world-level expert in just about anything, from ISO audits to medicine to fine wines. There is also the “third way,” jobs that don’t involve international travel, but pay enough and have enough vacation that you can afford to travel for leisure.
Good luck with your decision!
For what it’s worth, traveled extensively for business primarily in Asia. Our trips would be 4 to 6 weeks at a time. It’s great in the beginning, but the novelty definitely wears off. Probably a great pursuit if you’re young and single. Not easy with a family.
I did a lot of traveling in the US as a consultant, and generally saw more in one tourist weekend in NYC than I did in a couple trips for business.
If you’re somewhere for an extended period, you do usually get a chance to see the sights, but a lot of the time, you’re either doing the airport-worksite-hotel triangle in some fashion, or you’re somewhere not too great like say… Topeka, Kansas, where even if you do have time, there’s not much to see, and Lawrence or Manhattan are about an hour away.
I’ve been waiting for someone to respond to my comment from seven years ago!
I try to force myself to see the sights whenever I travel. A lot of people don’t like doing stuff alone, so they often end up heading straight back to the hotel for room service.
Airline Pilot?
My son is one, and he visited 4 different cities and two countries. Yesterday.
Aargh! There really needs to be some sort of anti-zombie mechanism here.
Anyway, back then (7 yrs ago) I was in the midst of being a consultant. I’m better now! Didn’t much care for it because as I said, it was either crappy places, or cool places where all I did was work like a dog and sleep.
Airports, Hotel rooms, conference halls world over look the bloody same. Most of the time you do not have the time nor the energy to do much touristy stuff. You do not know the city or the locale very well. We have threads here all the time, with people asking what they should see, when the are going for tourist purposes, and these are often in world class cities like London, NYC, Rome etc. When you really do not know what to see, you really do struggle.
IME, the best trips are those to cities which you already know very well. For me places like London or Dubai. I know those cities very well, and I know how to entertain myself there. The next best are those when you have a colleague who so knows or have a friend or family who are locals. You should not rely on locals, they might not know the best tourist spots and are too busy in own life anyway.
Screw going somewhere I know well; I want to go somewhere new.
But you’re right, you can’t just wing it like that. During the winter 2010 European blizzards, my wife and I got stuck in Italy for 3 extra days (had to fly out of Milan instead of Rome to get home), and since we hadn’t planned anything or done any research on Milan, we were kind of at a loss as to where to go and what to see. We saw the big things- Duomo, La Scala, and the Galleria, but we were out of luck on the Last Supper, and really didn’t know what else to see.
With proper research and planning, going somewhere new can be a real blast, but without it, it can be frustrating and disappointing.