How about a trip to Jordan

Northern Jordan is a place of a few surprises. While superficially at least there isn’t a great deal for tourists to perhaps look forward to, this region, and in particular the capital Amman, are an ideal place for a long weekend break. The people here are very friendly and hospitable, the city is clean and on the whole very safe, with many areas thriving and growing rapidly, trying in no small part to emulate other, better-known cities, across the Middle East.
If they succeeded it might be a shame as Amman would lose a great deal of its charm and relaxed nature in the process, but progress is progress and times change, so if you want visit a shopping-friendly, fabulous-food-galore and culturally rich city before it morphs into something less recognisable, now is the time!
Travelling south to southern Jordan without visiting the 4,000-year-old city of Petra, would be like going to Arizona and deciding you “couldn’t be bothered” to see the Grand Canyon. You simply must. Aside from this, southern Jordan is largely, a vast uninhabited desert, except for random settlements dotted throughout the Wadi’s, the most famous of which being Wadi Rum, simply epic scenery (if you like golden sand and ornate rock formations glistening under a deep blue sky) and, in the very far south, Aqaba, a city on the warm waters of the Gulf of Aqaba.
Aqaba is a city very much like Eilat in Israel, or Las Vegas in Nevada, in that it is entirely surrounded by uninhabitable land (or sea) and yet thrives, bustles and has its own micro-climate bringing sun-worshippers and sight-seers in equal measure.