Mud Fest

Our skin glistens pink, our lips are plump from sea salt, our ears and toe nails are mud caked, our shoulders and arms are sore from wrestling, all signs that we survived “Mud Fest. “

This blissful occurrence happens only once a year. Korea is trying to really promote it as being the only place in the world to hold such an event. Think tomato throwing in Italy… getting muddy in Korea….as the Koreans would say, “Same same.”
So what is it? It is a beach festival event called Boryeong Mud Festival. We traveled by bus “Bright on” early (my school name) to Seoul and then caught a bus with adventure Korea to Boreyong City, Chungcheongnam-do province, on the West Coast.

The ‘we’ actually traveling/staying in a room together consisted of Roberta, Daniel Sweet (both names need to be mentioned as I may refer to him as Sweet), Joey, and Louis. Weeks before the date arrived we booked a spot to go to the event with a company here in Korea, called “Adventure Korea.” This company does regular outings for foreigners all throughout the year. (tours to North Korea, hiking, bungee jumping/rafting, temple stays etc.) This was our first time doing something with them. I would recommend it for the mud festival because everything was completely taken care of - transportation, accommodation, and extra events that the regular ‘Joe Blow’ would not be able to experience.

All 220 (5 buses) of us “Waguks” (foreigners) arrived at the beach and got ushered in an orderly fashion to our hotel rooms. On this note, everyone must picture a 3m by 3m square room with wallpaper on all 4 walls including the ceiling and the sole piece of furniture was the TV in the corner. This is standard in Korea. Coming home and seeing a bed in a hotel room will be a luxury alas, blankets for sleeping on the floor is the norm.

Beers and drinks were poured and we all headed to investigate the beach. The beach was beautiful, well that or the day itself was beautiful. The sun was shining and if one looked toward the ocean there was not one high rise concrete block building to be seen!!!!! Apparently the beaches are much better on the East coast, but this beach, Daecheon Beach, was wonderful. It as a nice big sandy beach (3.5 km long) with clean water, albeit not the beautiful clear kind, but who wants to see those gigantor magnified legs through the water?

The people that host “Mud Fest” (again who IS it that does these things???) trucked in literally heaps of muddy clay for various stations on the beach. There were little bowls with paint brushes in them to paint one’s body, a ‘Mud Super Slide’ (think blown up air filled two story slide), a ‘Mud Prison’ (where the clean could be thrown in to get dirtier), and a “Mud wrestling field”—(aka mud pit) and then of course a huge stage for Korean ‘pop’ dancers and drunken Norebonging (karaoke). All of this in the name of getting dirty and walking around like a swamp creature. The best part was when it was time to get clean you had a whole ocean at your disposal!!!

I painted a little of the stuff on but didn’t go too hard… BECAUSE all of us ‘Adventure Korea’ kids were going to be bused off to the “Mud Flats” for some ‘Extreme Marine Mud Training.’ This was by far the best part. We got off the bus and were thrown army print pants and long sleeved shirts and ordered to suit up. We then were let loose on these mud flats which in the area of Boreyong consist of 9.9 million square meters of blackish mud infused with minerals such as geranium and bentonite. These minerals are supposed to be great for one’s skin and like any industrialized nation Korea has bottled it up and is selling it for a decent profit… and here I was literally rolling around in the stuff for free!
The mud itself had a thin layer of salt water on it so it was gooey and slippery. We had races on the stuff, we had seal-like sliding contests, and we had wrestling (impromptu and organized). It was a blast! My hair was covered, my face was completely black, I did not have a spec of skin showing and those clothes they gave us were practically falling off they were so heavy! When we were finished we piled the clothes and had a mass shower (clothed shower for you visual folks) all together from a truck with 6 showers coming out the side and one delighted Korean man spraying the lot of us with a fire hose.
After this it was back on the bus and beach time where we walked around and swam a little in the sea while mingling with our ‘dirty’ friends. For dinner, I had Korean BBQ style Clam creatures. This means there was a little grill inserted into my table with coals and everyone used thongs to cook their own meat. It was delicious though one of them scared me to a full out scream when it ‘popped’ open and just about jumped to the next table! After dinner there was more beach chilling and then the night finished with fireworks over the water. Purely magical!!!
Sunday there was more time to soak up the rays, play Frisbee in the water (note Roberta ordered a frisbee online and it attracts all sorts of attention when we play at the park as most Koreans have never seen one before), and just relaxing. We left late afternoon and arrived exhausted but safely home that night.