Friday, July 30, 2010

Mud Fest!

It was pretty much what it sounds like. On July 19th, Andrew and I boarded a bus at 10:00pm anticipating our ‘3.5’ hour bus ride to the north eastern part of Korea. Well, it was actually more like 11pm when we left and the 3.5 hour bus ride turned into a 6 hour bus ride! This was due to two circumstances: 1) It was pouring down rain, so we were driving a little slower than usual. 2) 80% of the bus thought they would get the party started early and drink on their way up to Boryeong. Well we all know what happens when you start drinking…your bladder fills up quickly and thus the five pee stops we had to make. We rolled in to our hotel at 5am.

I forgot to mention that along with the drinking, there was bus karaoke. So sleeping wasn’t an option. Mixing drunk people stuck on a bus with a very loud karaoke system was just a recipe for annoyance and disaster. At least our bus didn’t have a puker like the other Ulsan bus did…haha.

This whole festival began when members of this little town were suffering from a lack of tourism. They created this event to draw in expats from all of Korea to get drunk, spend money, and roll around in some mud; and 13 years later it’s still one of the most anticipated events in Korea. Naturally Andrew and I had to check it out.

So the next morning (the same morning we arrived) we walked down to the beach. It was absolutely pouring pitchforks and hammer handles, but we weren’t at mud fest to stay clean and dry so we went with it. Basically, we would cover ourselves in mud, play around in the waves of the ocean, participate in some obstacles courses, and then repeat. Sorry I have no pictures because I didn’t want to ruin my camera. But you can google the festival…there are tons of pictures!

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