I want to record long conversations (5-10 hours) and be able to play
that on a CD Player. Quality of playback should be good.

Please suggest a solution that involves least hassles (fewest steps,
least amount of time) from recording to playing. User friendliness is
important, not frills in the product.

I strongly prefer a recorder with removable media so that I don’t have
to transfer files from the recorder too frequently. The recorder
should be portable. I don’t need voice recognition and transcription.
My budget is US$200.

I guess that there is yet no way to record on CD direct, is there?

Please don’t suggest obscure brand equipment that may not be available
in Singapore/ Hong Kong where I live/ travel.

Since the conversations are a bit longer, I think you can rule out
cassette corders which far I have seen cannot record more than 180 min
at the max.

Other options I see are the Sony NetMD recorder, 
http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MZ-N707.html
on which you have the option to record Minidiscs and the maximum time
they last is for around 5 hrs or so ( in LP mode ). You can find it at
some places for around 150 -175$ range, and as an accessory you might
have to buy a mike might be 20-30$ and MDs themselves are pretty
cheap(10 pack < 10$). You can find other MD(Minidiss) players which
might be lower price range. One problem with it is a bit slow to
transfer whatever you have recorded on an MD to CD ( there are 2 steps
involved - 1. transfer from MD player to your PC 2. Burn a CD out of
the file transfered.) But the best thing about it is extremely
portable and the battery lasts very long.

other options I suggest you check out are, Flash Memory mp3 players
like Creative Muvo, Digitalway MPIO-FL100 etc.  I think probably you
have to go for ones which are 128MB> greater memory which should fit
the long conversations. Also there are very similar USB drives some of
which have the Voice Recording capabilities. and almost all of them
are extremely portable so you dont have to worry about that. Also
transfer of the files from the player to the PC should be very simple
with all the flash memory kind.

Even I didnt see any direct from voice to CD recorder. You can
probably do it on a PC.

Maybe something here:
http://www.ahernstore.com/voicerecorders.html

Dear Dairyman, thanks for your comment.
However, I think mp3 players often can transfer sound files from PC to
the players but may not transfer the files from players to PC (which I
need in order to burn it on CD). Sony Net MD Recorder MZ-N707 also may
not transfer the recorded sound files to PC. Incidentally, Creative
Muvo has no provision for expanding memory. Cassette recorders are
ruled out, not because of long recording time requirement, but the
hassles of transferring that onto CD.

'PoGo's MP3 Recorder RipFlash' or 'Olympus Voice Recorder/ MP3 Player
DM1' could be canduadates. The MP3 or wav files can easily be burned
as files (.cda) that can play on any home CD Player (not only 'MP3 CD
Player')