Sunny Climes - recommendations?

Dubai is beautiful and relatively cheap (but not as cheap as Morocco).  Many people never consider Dubai because it's in the Middle East.  But it's safe, clean, affordable, tolerant (women don't need to cover up here), they serve alcohol, and a lot more.

Just one thing to watch: Many hotel bars in Dubai, especially those in 4-star hotels, are doubling as brothels.  If you see table full of young attractive women speaking in Russian, you can bet they're probably "working girls".  But tourists also mingle there so it's not a big deal!

We don't really want to spend a ton of time flying, so the Bahamas, Jamaica, etc. are out. 

At this point, I would gladly spend ANY amount of time flying...just to be back on Clearwater Beach, Florida...sigh

Carolyn B

Well thanks very much to everyone who contributed to this thread!!! We actually really wanted to go to Dubai, but it ended up being more expensive than we wanted. So the holiday is booked and we settled for the Greek Islands. We're off to Rhodes on the 7th for a week all-inclusive at a five star hotel, and I absolutely can't wait. We got an awesome deal and the hotel looks gorgeous. Honestly we're both just so burned out on life right now that the idea of just relaxing for a week and not worrying about money (hence all-inclusive), school (I'll only have one paper left by then), and work (though with my luck I'll miss some crazy good job interview while I'm gone!) sounds like heaven no matter WHERE!