Mudfest

My first weekend in Korea I went to the Boryeong Mud Festival (Mudfest). Some of the other teachers at my school were going so I decided to tag along aka: invite myself. I heard it was a lot of fun. We took the train down from Suwon, it was about two hours on the train and a nice ride. The festival is held in Daecheon on the beach. Basically it's like MTV Spring Break. I went with a group of eight people though we ended up being twelve in total when everyone found their friends. There was a roped off area with inflatable slides, tug-o-war, and other games and things meant to get you as muddy as possible. The story is that the mud there is suppose to be really good for your skin so everyone goes in bathingsuits, gets completely muddy, drinks, and has a good time.

I had fun walking around and seeing everything. I also took time when people were getting all muddy to go down and stand in the water. I feel a sense of accomplishment in every body of water I get to stand in so I stood in the Yellow Sea/West Sea for a couple minutes just thinking about thing. Mostly reflecting on how I'm in South Korea (who saw that one coming??). It was never a plan of mine to come here but I'm going with the flow and enjoying this unexpected trip. I feel like oceans/seas are good places for reflection so I had my little moment then joined up with the group and took part in muddy tug-o-war. Such is life :)

Later in the day we went back to our rented room, took showers, then went out to dinner. Since we were right on the ocean there was a lot of good sea food to be found and dinner was clams and oysters grilled in the shell right at our table. I'm not a huge shellfish fan but it was good. The place we stayed in was called a "pension". They are very common here and it's basically an empty room and they give you mats and pillows for however many people your sharing with. It's good because you can cram a lot of people into one to make it cheaper. The downside is that you sleep on the floor with only a thin mat. It was not the most comfortable experience but for one night it was fine.

Me and the Mudfest Mascots

The night we got there they had fireworks and it felt good sitting on a beach on a beautiful evening talking to new people. The next morning I walked on the beach for a while with two girls before we headed back to the train to come home. We also got our free souvenier which was some soap made with the famous Boryeong mud. It was nice getting to meet a bunch of new people and the festival is only once a year so I was glad I was able to go.

Mudfest walkway and Daecheon Beach