Boryeong Mud Festival )
I got to Korea at the end of August 2007 and missed a number of fun summer things to do being that I was such a newbie. However, there are a few things that people have discussed over and over in the past 11 months, and one of the most common of those things is the Boryeong Mud Festival in Daechon Beach.
The discussions started a few months ago with attempting to find some rooms, and transportation but no one ever really seemed to do anything about it. Well, with one month left before the opening day after a quick search through all of the tour groups, a friend suggested worknplay.co.kr which had an excellent tour package all set up. I'm a big fan of planning events, and having to do as little thinking as possible so it was perfect. After a last minute scramble to wire some money over to them, my group of about 15 secured their spots and were on their way.
We met at 8am Saturday and were welcomed with coffee and delicious, cheesy focaccia bread from California Pizza Kitchen, we boarded two nice coach buses down to Daechon and watched some movies, and 3 hours later got to our quaint lodgings at this little hostel type place about a mile down the road from all the crazy action.
The festival was actually rather intense. Everything is free, and there's mud wrestling, mud water slides, mud pools, mud massages, and so on.
All of the mud is used in making cosmetics and if you signed the guest book at any of the booths you got some free mud soap (which is incredible to use by the way). I spent all day on the beach going from getting all mudded up to hanging out, to washing it off and swimming in the ocean only to do it all over again. They had tables and brushes set up all over so it was pretty easy:
And man, was there drinking. Basically Daechon goes from this tiny little sleepy beach town into this massive sprawling spring break-esque party town for a week. If you never participated in a traditional spring break back in the states, and always wanted to - Boryeong is where you gotta go.
Even though I'm explaining it as a party-town, hook-up-a-thon, crazy good time - there were actually a ton of Korean families sprawled all down the beach. I have to tell ya, Korean children all mudded up are absolutely adorable.
If you didn't want to be part of the insanity, you could easily go a 50 meters or so in either direction and get some peace and quiet. Sunday morning actually, I wondered over to my little portion of the beach, got all mudded up, and just hung out. It was kinda nice actually - AND there were no lines at the mud slides!
The weather for this upcoming weekend looks rather terrible so I doubt I'll be going back, but this past weekend was one of the most fun I've had in Korea. Saturday night we didn't even need a bar - just get some beers from any of the conveniences stores, pick up a handful of roman candles, and hang out on the beach until the wee morning hours. Nothing more fun than that. And going through worknplay was one of the best decisions we made as well - hell - even got a free t-shirt out of the deal and some of the best food I've had in months. If you're reading this - and plan on doing ANYTHING in Korea next summer - book with worknplay and just go experience it for yourself. If nothing else, man does that mud make your skin feel about 5 years younger.
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