Boryeong Mud Fest

---

So I finally got to experience the wonder that was Mud Fest. It was hyped to an extreme degree, so I was a bit nervous that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations, but luckily that didn’t happen. It was one of the most fun weekends I’ve ever had. I roomed with a couple of my coworkers, so we got up pretty early Saturday morning (tough for me, but I made it happen) and took a cab to Suwon, the nearest large town from where we live. We took a train south from Suwon to a small, rural town called Daecheon 대천(not to be confused with Daejeon 대전, the 5th largest city in the country, which I’ve already visited. They’re on the same train line btw. That’s not confusing at all…) We took a bus into the town of Boryeong, which is right on the East China Sea. There was another couple on the train/bus with us that booked with the same group and were staying at the same hostel as us. We clearly didn’t know where we were going, but they passively followed us everywhere, which I found a bit weird. But we got them there eventually. The woman we booked with gave us some directions she wasn’t positive of. And she ended up being wrong on a couple of points, but luckily I can ask strangers where landmarks are, so we were able to find our meet-up point (Lotteria, the Korean version of McDonalds. Sometimes they’re actually next to each other) and call our contact who took us to our hostel.

Hostels in Korea can be a bit different. Some of them are just like hotel rooms that you’d expect to find and some have no beds, but mats and pillows that you spread out on the floor. This hostel happened to be the second kind, which I actually tend to prefer. We went right from our hostel to the beach. We were about a 15 minute walk down the beach from all the festivities. They had live music playing at a bandshell, an extensive mud-playground area, which cost 5 dollars to get into (mud wrestling pit, mud slides, mud obstacle courses), a free area where you paint on the mud (which is supposed to be good for your skin), and the sea itself which was extremely warm (SO much warmer than the Sea of Japan was a few weeks ago.

A few more of my coworkers and some of our friends from Dongtan were saying in a pension right across the street from all of this, so we spent a lot of time back and forth from their place, getting out of the heat and resting after dinner. Their pension had a barbeque out back, which was really nice. They also had a lot of open-air restaurants in tents along the beach, so we got samgypsal galbi late at night. I actually hate samgypsal (think really, really fatty bacon) but it was a cool experience nonetheless.

The next morning we hung out on the beach for a while before our train left to go back to Suwon. We were extremely burnt from the day before. This provided much amusement for our students when we all got back on Monday. My students were confused that I could STILL be red, even though I was at the beach the day BEFORE. Koreans don’t really go out in the sun so much, so sunburns are sort of a foreign concept. If they must go out, they stay pretty well covered with clothing.

I have no pictures because it would have been pretty stupid to bring your camera into that muddy of an environment. But it’s too bad, since I wish I had more to remember it by.

This Friday I leave for Malaysia, so I’ll be sure to post again when I get back!

---