The Dominican Republic has an amazing and diverse cultural heritage. It is independently thriving with its agricultural and industiral developments. I am unable to convince myself to return however, mostly due to my stay at this hotel in 2003. My son, who was 3 at the time, tripped over a very large rat one evening by the pool after participating in a children's program. The rat was large-probably around 5-8 pounds. Luckily my husband scooped him up as the rat was circling around with a broken leg and he avoided being bitten. There were rats playing around the pool area during the day causing guests to scream occasionally and raise their feet up to their chairs. There were large cockroaches in our room on the ground floor. The pillows smelled of mildew. After the rat episode on the third evening we requested to be moved to a new room on an upper floor. In the second room we did not see any cockroaches-this may have been due to sleeping with all the lights on due to my fear of the rats. The pillows in this room also smelled like mildew. In one restaurant for an evening meal my husband had to use the restroom. There were roaches crawling out of cracks in the walls. The food tasted great and we did not get sick. I just can't help but imagine the roaches and rats walking over the kitchen areas since they were out in public areas. I could not sleep and anticipated the end of our trip. We decided to get a Taxi and go into a small town to shop. A prostitute approached my husband while in a cafe with myself and our 3 year old. A man from a shop attempted to carry off my child in an attempt to get us to follow him to his store (this was not encouraging to get us to buy something). Finally we were riding the shuttle back to the airport and are pulled over by men with machine guns. Apparently we were attempting to return to the airport when government members were arriving for the latin american summit. We have stayed at other Riu properties in Latin America, and the Melao was an entirely different experience. I do realize that the climate is very nice for roaches and rats, but the hotel needs desperately to implement some form of pest control as well as dehumidification system in the rooms. I did not feel safe (especially for my child) for these health reasons as well as the political instability. My husband is a police officer and speaks Spanish fluently and usually we are comfortable traveling about and had looked forward to a trip to the Dominican Republic for quite some time. It is the most unforgetable trip we have ever been on.