2011 Boryeong Mud Festival!!

Wow, so this weekend was probably one of the best weekends we've had in Korea so far. We went to Boryeong for their annual mud festival. If you're wondering what a mud festival, it pretty much is exactly what it sounds like. A festival dedicated completely to mud, and getting covered in it! But lets start at the beginning.

We had signed up for this trip 2-3 months ago. We had heard that if there was one festival to not miss in Korea, it would be this one. So we signed up, and after months of waiting, last Friday it was finally time to go. My bad, Saturday. We booked our trip through a tour company called Adventure Korea. I really have to tip my hat to them. The trip was so well-organized, and everything went so smoothly. They got us our motel room, the buses left on time, and it was just a really well-planned event. Jenn and I are definitely going to look to them first anytime we are looking for a tour company. They really were just amazing.

Before

Anyways, we left Saturday on the buses at 7:30 in the morning. Pretty early, but Boryeong is 3 hours away from Daegu, so we knew why we left. We went with two of our friends, and also met up with a lot of our other friends once we got there. Before we got to the festival, Adventure Korea had set up a little event for all of its participants. We got to check out these awesome mud flats about 10 minutes away by bus from the main festival area. We got there, they gave us army fatigues and black shirts, and had 4 different events for us. There was mud soccer, mud boot camp, mud wrestling, and mud pyramids. We didn't get enough time to do the mud pyramid, but we did everything else, and it was really fun. For mud boot camp, we had this really buff Korean dude yelling at us to do push ups in the mud, roll around in the mud, crawl in the mud, and he was really funny and awesome! Halfway through the whole thing, it started raining, but the thing is, it felt great! Keep in mind it was already like 85 degrees out or so, and the rain provided a much needed cool down. And what makes mud even better anyways? Rain of course!

After!

After our little field trip, we got cleaned up and piled back on the bus. The bus then took us to our motel, and we checked in. After that, we went exploring! Our hotel was literally right next to the beach so we got out and there was a boardwalk right next to it. Along the boardwalk there were many restaurants, all selling really good looking seafood (which we can't eat cause Jenn doesn't eat sea food) and really good Korean bbq (which we did eat, delicious!). After lunch, we kept walking toward the main festival area. So there is the beach, the boardwalk and then the mud park. Which cost us some money to get in (first time they charged for mud park apparently) but I'd say that it was well worth it. Inside this mud park there was mud slides, mud wrestling, mud prison (go inside and they splash mud on you), mud tug of war, mud obstacle course, mud race, mud everything! The only annoying part were the lines, but we didn't mind waiting too bad. We did everything of course, except for mud wrestling. Outside of the mud park, there was mud painting (with different colored muds) and a bunch of food, souvenir, and mud cosmetic tents. And the beach of course. After we spent a good amount of time in the mud park, we went to clean ourselves off. Because we were covered in mud! So we walked out of the mud park, and into the ocean. Just awesome. Water felt great, and we were clean in no time. We chilled in the ocean for a while, then went back to the motel to shower and get ready for dinner.

After meeting up with a friend for dinner, and waiting forever for our food, we left the restaurant at around 10 or so. We decided to go get some snacks, desserts, and drinks and go relax on the beach. The beach was huge, and the coolest part was that they prepared for all the people, so there were huge floodlights everywhere that illuminated the beach for everyone. At 10 pm at night! On our way to meet up with some more friends, we walked past a concert. With famous pop stars! So we watched that for a bit and then kept heading toward our friends. Then we got distracted again. By a firework show! It was a dang good one too, and completely random at like 1030 at night! Eventually, we made our way onto the beach, relaxed, talked, and had a good time. Around 2:30, we called it a night and headed back to the motel. And of course, the beach and boardwalk area were still packed full of tourists and people. But we were tired!

Next day was a lot more of the same. We woke up, hit the mud park up, and went to the beach. It was warmer on Sunday so we stayed in the ocean a little while longer. Then at 3:50, we headed back to our tour bus and left Boryeong. It was a wonderful weekend, and something that I will never, ever forget. I'm going to join in with the rest of the foreigners here and tell everyone this, if there is one festival that you have to go to in Korea, make it the Boryeong Mud Festival!!! Oh, and all these pictures were taken with Jenn's camera and an amazing waterproof case! Bye!