Mud Festival

This past weekend was another terrific Korean experience, with the Mud Festival at Boryeong beach.

We got up nice and early to leave here at 7AM so we could catch the buses heading down at 8:30. Our tour included 5 buses and around 225 people, mostly from North America. There were 6 dudes on our bus who brought insulated backpack coolers with cases of MGD for the bus ride, and they start their drinking day at 8:30. And when they started, they didn't stop. That was a foreshadowing of the weekend to come.

We left at 9 and arrived at 'military training' around 12:00. There we were handed army pants and long-sleeved shirts and led down to a massive mud pit. The tide here goes out forever, well over 1km, and we were in the remains of the ocean for this part. It was really fun, consisting of mud wrestling, mud ball fights, and mud sliding.

One game called for volunteers to lay in a row and my brave/stupid ass decided it couldn't be that bad. Once they had 15 people lying there, everyone else was instructed to come and bury us. My last vision before I closed my eyes and parsed my lips was the biggest dude at the whole place gunning directly for me. (His belly hung below the one-size-fits-all shirts, which were big) The next thing I felt was a ball of mud bounce off my chest and splash directly up my nose. The 2nd was a mud ball land SQUARELY on my testes. In the words of Ron Burgandy, I immediately regretted that decision to get buried.

Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of that part, but I don't think anybody had a clean spot on them.

From there we went to the beach, dropped our stuff at the hotel, and headed to the beach. The beach was absolutely rammed and it took a while to walk anywhere you needed to go. The festival was a little different than I expected, I thought it would be like the military training place where people were running and splashing in the mudsands when the tide went out. Instead it was normal beach activities, with mud stations where you could go and paint yourself with grey mud. I was also surprised that the festival has only been going on since 1998. I thought it was more traditional than that, and I'm amazed at how big its become in 10 years. It runs from July 14-22 and will have more than 1.4 million people visit.

We hung out with people we've met all over Korea on Saturday. Leah and Andy, Marois, Cyrus and Eamon from Incheon, Josh and his girlfried Michelle from Suwon area, and we saw Courtney from Laurier for the first time since we've been here because she lives on the south coast in Busan. We also met some Brits that Andy and Leah knew from a previous tour, Neil, Andy and his brother Richard. We met Jay, Steph and their friend Matt for dinner, watched some great fireworks, and ended up at yet another noraebang. I played the hell out of that tamborine though, ended up with a bruise that went from my thumb about halfway down to the base of my palm. But it was worth it to provide that rythem section!

After the great Saturday, Sunday was more subdued. We walked around to the various tents they had set up, sat on the beach for a while, pretty much just took it easy. We caught the bus at 4, those same guys drinking from the morning before were so loud and obnoxious for the better part of the 5 hour ride home.

We had a great time, although Kelly had to deal with some more drama. Unfortunately I was unconscious for the whole thing, so I'll let her tell the story in a later post.