2011 Boryeong Mudfest - Just go with it.

I knew that any chance of keeping my dignity was gone as soon as a twenty something giggling Korean dude turned around from a tub of mud and smeared me with Boryeong's magical healing mud. Then he giggled some more. He turned back to the vat of mud, grabbed another handful, and smeared my face for good measure. I laughed too. The Boryeong Mudfest had begun in earnest.

I guess to explain what the mudfest is about I must talk about the mud. You know those mud-masks that are good for your skin? Boryeong produces one. It's famous...at least in Korea, and is good for your body condition. In short, Boryeong produces some cosmetic mud and hosts a festival every year to promote their product. Strangely this festival over the past 14 years has turned into more of a gathering of foreigners than a Korean event, but it happens in Korea, and plenty of Koreans do participate in the mud slinging (friendly, of course). Here's the story of our trip to the mudfest.

Babehoney knew that she wanted to go to this festival since before we even sent our applications in to our recruiter to come work in Korea. It seems that every foreigner who spends time in Korea must attend the mudfest during their first year as a rite of passage. Babehoney looked up some different ways to get to Boryeong for the festival and decided that a good bet for our money was to go with Adventure Korea. We used Adventure Korea for our rafting trip on the Hantan River, so we're familiar with them and like the quality of their product and service. I think we paid something like 85,000wons each for the trip, which included basically transportation, morning activities on Saturday, and our accomodations. Not bad.

Saturday morning we woke up early at about 6:00am to get ready and head to Banwoldang Station (about a 30 minute subway ride) downtown to catch our bus to Boryeong. The trip was easy, and we started our 3.5 hour bus ride with comfort. We made a stop at a service station (Korean roadside rest stops are amazing, by the way) about halfway through the trip.  We didn't go straight to Boryeong city, but first to the Boryeong mudflats where the cosmetic mud is harvested. 20,000 Republic of Korea Marines also do training at the mudflats annually. There were several activities here.

First we changed into "military" garb, or as I'd call it, a tiny long sleeved t-shirt and a pair of BDU pants with a broken zipper. After changing we slipped on socks (to protect against any bits of shell, etc) and stomped into the mud. We played soccer in the mud (which was hilarious. The Americans are definitely not as into it as the Brits/Irish/Saffas/etc.) which was where I got my first taste of it when I tripped over another player. Literally. My first taste of the mud. It wasn't too bad. We also did "marine training" which was about 5 pushups, some leglifts, a mud fight, and then watched some people mud wrestle for a bit before we decided to shower off. They had open air showers with coooooooooooold cold water. It was actually quite invigorating. We loaded back up on the bus and rode into Boryeong City.

Boryeong City is small, and reminds me a bit of Panama City Beach, Florida, but with no tall hotels. Our hotel was nice and clean and had a padded floor, but no beds. That's pretty common here. We got situated, changed into mud-clothes, and headed out to the beach. Honestly, for a small town in Korea the beachfront was really a happening place. The beach itself is beautiful with views of the East China Sea and small offshore islands. It's not at all what I would expect a beach to look like in Korea, but then again, what in Korea turns out as you might expect it to anyway?

We ran into a couple of friends as we worked our way North on the beach towards the festival, and had no trouble finding the center of the action. The mud park was in full swing with giant inflatables (covered with mud) crawling with tons of people (also covered with mud). The admission fee was 5,000W and despite our best efforts we never even made it through the gate. After getting a mud rub-down we were distracted by some noise on the main stage, so we had a look.

There was a dance contest, limbo contest, and several foreign men who thought that gyrating in their tiny bathing suits was hilarious. Alcohol just has its way with some people, I guess. The prize for the official events was a trip to Jeju-do, which is a much nicer prize than a lot of the participants might have realized.

While we were watching the activities on stage Carolyn complimented this man on his fashionable sweat sleeve that looked like a tattoo. He told us he was the owner of the stage we were watching and asked us a few questions about how we heard about the festival and how we got to the festival, where we were staying, etc. We took photos together (that's like shaking hands) before he suggested we join the crowd and get sprayed down by his giant fan-truck, Optimus Prime. He also said that Transformers 3 was a wonderful movie, for good measure.

Optimus Prime cracked me up. Not because it was a fan spraying mist and water on people, but because the people, 80% or so who didn't speak Korean, instinctively knew to go stand in front of it, raise their arms in the air, and start screaming. Say what you will about mudfest being a load of debauchery, but any time you get a group of people together and say you're going to spray them with water (or mud), they're likely to turn into a group of kids. We would have joined the melee, but...well...we had to pee. So we headed back to the hotel room...and took a nap.

We woke up a little after 6:00pm, took a quick, cold, shower and headed back towards the festivities. We even wore nicer-ish clothes and decided not to get muddy again. Some friends of ours who live in Busan also came up for the festival, and after a few phone calls we were all in place. We met some real nice guys from the U.S. Air Force and had a relaxed time while the sun set over the East China Sea. We had a bite to eat, gave our friends a chance to clean up, and headed back out to watch some famous K-pop Girl-band do their thing before a big fireworks show.

The fireworks show was honestly unbelievable. I have no idea how they packed so much ordinance onto one little tugboat. Some of the explosions lit up the sky for what seemed like minutes, and made shapes that hung in the air like something out of a Harry Potter movie. I know that fireworks and whatnot were invented in this part of the world, but damn, you would have thought we would have caught up by now. They put on what was probably the best fireworks show I've ever seen.

After the fireworks we looked around for a place to get some booze and do some dancing. A few clubs had signs on the door that said "Koreans Only," which honestly, is fine. Sometimes they can seem a bit xenophobic, but I think that if the business owners would want to pass on the money they could have made on the foreign crowd to keep their club less rowdy it's their choice. The foreign crowd was pretty boozed up by this point and quite rambunctious. We found a street party right outside of our hotel and joined in, and had beers, conversation, and bad dancing until about three o'clock in the morning.

Carolyn and I both felt a bit rough this morning, so we slept in, loaded our bags on the bus, and got a slow start on the day. We started out with a huge bottle of water and a walk up the beach. We found a cafe called Orange, and so had every other foreigner in town for the festival. A little over an hour's wait after we ordered, I had a waffle with mixed fruits, and Babehoney had toast and eggs. We met up with our friends one more time to say hi, but they had to head back to Busan a little earlier than our departure. The majority of the day today was just some ultra-relaxed beach combing and general recovery from last night. We found a place to order a pizza, sat down, relaxed, and got back on the bus to Daegu at about 4pm.

The bus pulled into Banwoldang Station at about 8pm, we headed home with a quick stop at BBQ Chicken (the Daegok-dong BBQ Chicken has the best fried chicken in the frickin' world!), got home, showered up, and Carolyn promptly passed out. She's snoring next to me right now while I finish this post up. The Boryeong Mudfest made for one hell of a weekend, and I'd recommend that everyone who comes to teach English in Korea attend it once.