This weekend, I talked to Rick Steves, the travel guru, about the unrest in the Middle East and he underscored the importance of travel as a means of bridging cultural divides. It might sound like a cliché, but it's true: Americans needs to travel because our diplomats can't do all the heavy lifting for us, security restrictions or not.

An exhibition entitled “Vietnamese Contemporary Art: The Colours of Vietnam” is now on show at the Washington Arts Club in the USA. The 30 paintings by seven artists depict Vietnam from its struggle for national independence to its current stage of development, offering the American audience a broad view of daily life in the country including family love, beautiful Vietnamese women in ao dai (traditional long dress) and changes in the capital city of Hanoi.

Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim has proposed an exchange programme among Malaysian and Indonesian journalists, art practitioners and students in an effort to enhance people-to-people ties between the two countries.

Manila has the "worst" brand value among 16 Asia-Pacific cities, according to the Location Branding 2012 report published by Public Affairs Asia and Ogilvy Public Relations. The survey showed that a location's brand is a significant factor in attracting foreign investments and tourists.

The U.S. Department of State announced today that Haitian troubadours Ti-Coca & Wanga-Nègès will travel to communities across America as part of a groundbreaking cultural diplomacy initiative, Center StageSM, from September 18-October 14, 2012.

“At a time when the United States seems very much in need of public diplomacy in the Middle East, in cases such as these, scholars, the host countries and the American public are all losers,” said Maurice Pomerantz, a Fulbright scholar who’d planned to spend the year teaching comparative literature in Lebanon but was relocated to Jordan because of the State Department’s security concerns.

Students from Confucius Institute in South Korea put the adapted version of traditional love story Legend of Chun Hyang on China's stage in Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) on Sept. 15, 2012, as people of China and South Korea just celebrated the 20th anniversary of their friendship in August.

Last week, before the world caught on fire over a film clip, I wrote about the paradox of value promotion in public diplomacy. No matter how appealing promoting one’s values may be, trying to do so in a global arena is fraught with difficulty. Yet, because values are integral to a nation’s communication, public diplomacy will inevitably reflect those values. What’s happening between the U.S.