You are aware that a tan is in fact just burnt skin? It's the preliminary stages of sunburn.
Embrace being pale - believe me, my boyfriend is Italian, and in Italy having pale skin is seen as being a sign of beauty as it's so rare over there. I get so many compliments about it despite being white as a sheet!
Back in the Tudor/Elizabethan period, paleness was also seen to prove good birth and royal connections as all the commoners had to work in the sun all day, thereby giving them darker skin.
There are ways to get around pale skin in the sun:
*Use a high factor, long lasting lotion. I belive Ambre Solaire do a 75 or 100 SPF that only has to be applied once a day, and it doesn't leave you with white streaks.
*Choose a foundation with at least 15SPF in it: Maybelline, Max Factor and L'Oreal usually have some in, but check the back of the packaging.
*Wear a headscarf (very in now!) or hat, as the parting and tops of the ears are the first bit to burn if you are very pale.
*If worried about burning on the beach, wear a sheer kaftan. That way you don't burn directly, but your skin still gets the benefit of some vitamin D.
Basically, if you go away somewhere hot in a different part of the world to where you were raised, your skin won't be accustomed to it. No matter what, you're going to have to be careful in the sun. If you get sunbeds, you'll just be burning your skin before you get there, and if you go a deep brown, you won't actually be able to tell whether you're burning your skin.
An extract from the recent World Health report about sunbeds:
"Once hoped to offer a better way to brown, tanning salons now take as much heat from medical experts as the sun. The World Health Organization recently stated that artificial tanning "provides the ideal setting for the development of malignant skin cancer" because users get periodic bursts of intense radiation. In addition, people in tanning beds often place their whole bodies under the ultraviolet light, leaving about twice the surface area exposed to direct rays."
If you want to volunteer for cancer, go right ahead but I think that really you value your health more than that...