Mud Festival Weekend!!

This past weekend was the annual Boryeong Mud Festival in Daechung Beach. This festival started 11 years ago, but became official 10 years ago. Basically, it is a festival that is full of mud, beach, sand, foreigners and alcohol. They have mud wrestling, inflatable slides, a mud prison, a mud swimming pool for kids, etc. Below are some pictures of the Mud Festival with brief explanations.

Mary Anne, Brianna and I on the bus on the way to Mud Festival trying to look semi-presentable considering how early it was. It was 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning when we left Incheon and we started drinking around 8:00 a.m. Jenn and Nicole decided to catch some zzzzzzz's on the way to Mud Festival... Shana, Valerie and Beth decided to drink instead. Their rule was NO drinking until 8:00 a.m. They were drunk by the time we arrived :) Wait! Jenn and Nicole have awaken. They have decided to break out their alcohol. Kaluha and milk saved the day! This was the beginning of Mud Festival. We saw these Koreans walking down the street covered in mud when we were walking to our hotel. This is the mud prison that they had at the festival. Basically, you go inside of it and people throw mud on you. It got so muddy that the floor eventually gave out, so they had to close it. Here is the pool where the mud wrestling took place. It's not as safe as it may look. Most people who decided to do the mud wrestling ended up with many cuts, bruises and a whole lot of mud all over their bodies. The very busy beach covered with foreigners. However, there were just as many Koreans, but they were all fully clothed, even when they went swimming in the beach. This is the live fish that Rudy picked out for us for lunch with one of the hotel owners. Peter and I enjoy our Free lunch courtesy of the Hyundai hotel owner. We enjoyed live/raw fish, Korean rice wine and soju.

Mud Festival is a two weekend event and is very popular in Korea. We went opening weekend. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon taking care of people getting checked in at the hotel I was staying at, which was a horrible experience because there were so many rude people I had to deal with. Rudy, ended up losing her bag the minute she got there, so she had no clothes or toiletries except for what she was wearing and whatever she had in her purse. She put so much effort into the Mud Festival for everyone and people were being their typical ignorant and rude selves and she is the one who loses her bag. After we got people checked in, dealt with all the bullshit and had a few beers we went to the hotel room and relaxed until Rudy's hotel owner took us for a live seafood lunch. He paid for the food, Korean rice wine and soju. The best or maybe worst part of lunch was eating live octopus. I really wanted to say I tried it and I figured what better place than Korea and with my friends, so below is a video of the octopus alive, so you know I'm not kidding followed by a video of me eating it. It actually ended up tasting a whole lot better than I thought it would. I would definitely try it again.

After lunch we drank some more hung out and took a walk down to the beach. It was later, so there weren't nearly as many people as during the day. The water was warm and the sun was shinning, so Rudy, Danny and I went for a stroll along the water and just enjoyed what a beautiful day it was. We ended up staying outside for quite a while drinking on the streets, meeting friends we had seperated from during the day and having a blast. A little later we headed back to the hotel room for a bit of relaxing and around 11:00 p.m. we headed back outside to see the fireworks, which were incredible and lasted a good 20 minutes and we drank some more beer :)

It was a very late night/early morning, but well worth it. Sunday came too soon, but we had all day to chill out and enjoy more of the Mud Festival, however, we ended up spending most of the day in the hotel room recovering and waiting for check-out at 4:00 p.m., so we could head back home. The bus ride home felt longer than it actually was, but I got home just after 8:00 p.m., showered and was in bed by 10:30 p.m.

I will be heading back to Mud Festival next weekend to get more out of it because Rudy and I spent too much time dealing with rude people and hotel issues, so we want one free weekend of no organization or responsibility. I'm hoping the next Mud Festival post will have me covered in mud and having the time of my life.