Well I guess I am now finally recovered from the Mud Festival, that is except for my cuts and scrapes which will need 1 more week to fully heal. It was crazy. We met up at the Waegook cook at 8:30am on Saturday morning and 45 of us got on a chartered bus(no bathroom) and headed to Boryeong. When I pulled up on my scooter I could already see people drinking, I think a few of them were still drinking from the night before. We drank so much on the way down that we had to stop every 45 minutes for someone to go to the bathroom, which was really annoying, but shit happens. My biggest complaint is that we didn't get a bus with a toilet in it, a minor issue. So our 2-3 hour trip turned into 4+ hours after all the stops, and everyone was drunk when we arrived. Boryeong is a Beach city located somewhere between where I live and Seoul. It is very nice, there are a lot of nice hotels and restaurants, but for the 10 days of the Mud Fest it is just a huge party town. We all got off the bus, there were 12 of us who reserved 2 rooms ahead of time at a hotel that was very close to the action. So the 12 of us walked to our hotel. We were led by some Korean girl who we asked for directions, and since Koreans are so nice she walked us to our hotel. There was also another 2 groups of people from our bus who stayed at the same hotel, the Brits and some other Americans( a shout out to Traci, this was her crew and I know she is reading this). The hotel was nice, we stayed in a traditional Korean style room, which means no beds just a floor and some blankets, which makes it easier to fit 6 in a regular size hotel room, we ended up sleeping 9 in there but that wasn't the plan. As soon as we set our bags down we got changed into our mud clothes and headed off for the beach, we first went into the mud pool, which is a big pool filled 1-2 feet high with muddy water and people wrestle, splash and play American style football and rugby in it. This is the place where I got most of my cuts, scrapes,bruises, etc. I am very tough to knock down it takes 3-4 people to do it, or one really, really big army guy as I learned. So everyone wanted to wrestle me and knock me over all the time. Korean men love to wrestle, their very homophobic but for some reason they like a lot of male contact, I don't understand but hey it's their country. So I wrestled a few old Korean guys, all my friends and a few army guys who of course take it very seriously. As usual the more I stayed up the worst I got it in the end, damn my low center of gravity and cat like reflexes. After this we went to the Mud Jail where you can paint yourself with mud with paintbrushes. It is really a gazebo with plastic jail bars where you paint and throw mud on everyone inside. Next to this was the mud wrestling ring, its a bounce house style ring. Also the kids mud pool, no one under 14 is allowed in the adult pool, which is good because they would probably get killed. Also nearby was the mud pool zip cord, where you zip down from a 25 foot platform to a pool of mud American Gladiators style. After we got all muddy we went to the ocean which is only 100-300 feet from the activities depending on the time of day(the tide really does move 200 feet). We swam for a while got the mud off then went to the mud painting area, its like the jail only there is more mud on tiki tables with a lot more paintbrushes, there are 100's of people painting themselves with mud in this area at all times, they even have colored mud to use here. SO after this we were really muddy and we went and did some of the activities again. I forgot to mention that we were drinking the whole time while doing all of this, at this point it is like 4pm and I have been drinking for over 7 hours. We did the mud obstacle course this time to, which starts off with a rope climb, then a slide, then a muddy hill climb and a slide, mud makes it all very difficult, it was also a inflatable thing ,everything I mentioned besides the pool was an inflatable thing. (like a bounce house at a carnival). Then we decided to go shower and eat. After eating we continued to drink but without the mud. I went to bed at like 4am, I was drunk the entire day, 20 hours straight, this is the longest I have ever drank. I easily drank 30 beers. I then passed out around 4am, woke up the next day around 10am, and went back and did it all over again, without the drinking, I didn't touch a beer on Sunday, but many of my friends did, their insane, literally. I ate Pizza for lunch/dinner then got on the bus around 5pm and headed back to Gumi. Oh and yes there were still people drinking on the bus ride back and we stopped every 45 minutes again, only this time it was more for puking and less for peeing. All in all I would say this is a once in a lifetime experience and I would recommend anyone who teaches in Korea to attend the Mud Festival, its every July, this was the 9th or 10th annual one, around 1 million people go the festival over 10 day period, or at least thats what I was told, a lot of people just go for 1-2 hours, its not that far from Seoul.
