Boryeong mud festival is the one thing most English teachers knew they would be attending before we left orientation. It’s probably the most popular event in all of Korea, and the biggest festival. Accommodation is booked up early so busses and hotels are organized months in advance. My crazy friend Nick took it upon himself to organize a trip for Daegu teachers. There were 90 people on two busses one entire pension (Korean hotel where everyone sleeps on the floor) rented for us. We met early from a subway stop near my house, and left at 9am. The bus ride up north was about 4.5 hours with one rest stop. I sat in the back of the bus and we managed to pass the time quickly. Drank some beer and soju, listened to music, and sang songs. It was a great time. When we got to mud fest it was pouring rain and the bus left us very far from our pension. We had to walk for half and hour to find our pension, but by the time we found it the sun came out and the rest of the weekend we had perfect weather.
Everyone dropped their stuff off and we basically bolted to the beach. It was a gorgeous beach, very big with nice sand. The city was much larger than any of us had expected, it took about 15-20 minutes to walk from our pension to where the main festival area was. When we got there it was freaking awesome! Ran into another group of friends who were on another tour, and Korean’s were taking non stop pictures of us. There was a big stage stet up on the beach, tons of giant sculptures to run around and the mud area was awesome. It had a big pool where everyone was tackling each other, giant inflatable slides, obstacle courses, mud wrestling ring, and other random stuff entertain us. It was cool just to look at! We had to pay and get wrist bands to go in, and once we were in we went straight for the pool. Kristin came out of left fielf and took me out, she was already wasted. So funny because she doesn’t drink often. I left the pool with her and we cut lines for all the fun stuff and the wrestling ring. The mud was obviously everywhere and my eyes were bloodshot for about 3 days. Totally worth it though! We met up with some other friends and went to the stage and danced, swam in the ocean, and painted each other in mud. It was defiantly a classic weekend, just so much fun. Everyone was drunk, but because there was so much going on and tons of things to participate in, people didn’t get too out of hand like at the beach party…or most weekends in Deagu.
Somehow I ended up at a BBQ and ran into this lady Karen who I hung out with at Starlight festival. She has travelled the world and is here working for the International Athletic Championships next month. She is a great lady and extremely fun to talk to. Next we headed to go play on the beach, but stopped to play some games that were set up all along the boardwalk and next to awesome street food. There were whole fried chickens! Best street food in Korea so far! I decided it was time for a nice swim so my friend Matt and I took a long swim out to a buoy. It felt nice to get a good swim in, it’s been forever. I love swimming out to sea and the feeling I get when I turn around and look at the land. Makes me wish I was sailing around the world and didn’t have to go back to land just yet. When we were heading back the lifeguards came out and told us to go back because the sun was setting. No one allowed in the water. Koreans are so scared of water. There are no deep ends in swimming pools, and at the water parks they make everyone wear life vests in 4 feet of water. Also, hats in wave pools at the adventure parks to keep hair out of the water. Seriously Korea? Anyway, we got out and watched an amazing sunset. It’s been so long since I’ve seen such a wonderful sunset over the ocean and made me realize how badly I want to move to the ocean next year. Not sure I can hang on another year in Korea as much as I love it. The ocean is calling me, I’m even dreaming about it now almost every night.
Soon after the sunset, my friend Kosta and I lost the group and didn’t see a single person we knew for 4 hours. That goes to show just how big this festival area was and how many people attended. We didn’t even really know each other, but after four hours of drinking and wondering you get to know someone a bit. We kicked it on the beach and watched an awesome firework show, went and saw one of the bands that was playing, and ended up in front of a club that was looking awesome. I had no shirt and no shoes, they had been stashed in a locker and there was no way to find our friends. There were thousands of people there and no one brought cell phones with them out in the mud. Kosta and I had no idea how to get back to the pension, so we decided we needed to get into this club. We went into the little family mart and I got some ugly water shoe things, and a Korean soccer shirt. Then we walked up the 3 floors of stairs passing the entire line and some guy let us cut in front of him! Everyone was dressed up and looking great, we were covered in sand, sun and 711 clothes. After a short time I lost Kosta, but eventually found a girl I knew. She was staying across the street from me. We danced for a few hours and then left and headed back to the pensions. We walked by a party hosted by Daegu Compass, I wanted to go earlier in the night but never found out how to get to it. When I walked up this guy was out front. We looked at each other and realized we went to high school together! It was crazy. Had never seen him around before and he lives in Daegu and knows tons of my friends. It was nice to see an East Angel!
The girls left and I stayed to hang with him for a bit. The told me how to get to the pension, but when I tried I could not find it. I walked around in circles for what seemed like forever, maybe an hour or so. Eventually I saw a white guy with no shirt and no shoes and figured he was either in my pension or the one across the street so I walked up to him and realized it was my friend Geoff. He was so happy to see me he had been wondering around for a long time too. So together, we wandered around until someone finally helped us out. I never would have found the place, it took like 5 turns and it was totally hidden at night time. Oh well, it was an adventure! Thank god Korea is safe! We didn’t want to wake people up in the rooms and the halls were lined with mattresses so we dragged one and threw it down in the hallway. We were about to sleep, but heard people outside and it turned out they were my roommates! We all talked about the events of the night until maybe 5am and then finally I went to my room, put my headphone in, crawled into my wonderful sleeping bag that I love so much and passed out.
My room had twelve of us in it and in the morning we had a great time talking about what the hell had happened to us the day/ night / early morning before. Naturally we made some vodka and orange juice drinks and headed back out to play. The sun was shining and everyone we walked by on the way to the beach was so freaking happy! Such a great festival and it was extremely well organized. There were giant piles of beer and soju bottles that the crews were picking up. They did a great job of cleaning up the coastline before everyone was back at it. Kristin called and I met with her, then Cindy Le joined, soon we ran into the boys we met my birthday weekend in Busan, and more and more people kept popping up. We had a nice crew and just hung out all day. Lots of swimming and jumping off the jetty, and I ran into Ackisha a girl from my EPIK group. She wanted to go get muddy so we took off with my disposable camera and snuck back into the mud area and got completely muddy again. We found a group of random people to make a tower with, ended up in what can only be described as fake rain. There was a giant group of people dancing next to the stage and next thing we knew it was basically raining from cannons, sprinklers, and fire hoses. It was fantastic and random as heck! Overall it was a wonderful day! We left the beach shortly after 3pm to make the bus departure time of 4pm. The ride back home was almost an hour shorter, but the bus driver was nuts on the road. Most people were relaxed, I slept a bit. I wish I could go back every weekend and do mud fest all over again. It truly was one weekend I will never forget!
http://www.mudfestival.or.kr/english/past/past2.php
Check out this video, the dialogue is hilarious.
