Muddy Mud Mud

Last weekend was the Boryeong Mud Festival. Boryeong is south of Seoul on Korea's western coast. The beach is huge and so beautiful, with lots of islands off the coast. It's also famous for its mineral-rich mud, and once a year thousands of people overrun this small beach town to party and cover themselves from head to toe in mud.

A huge group of Busan teachers chartered 4 buses that left at 3am on Saturday morning. Here's Mara, my coworker, with Ronald right before we left.
I guess the idea was to sleep on the bus as we drove there, but it wasn't easy. This is when Paul and I were getting a little delirious.


Our buses pulled up in Boryeong in the morning, and we went straight for the water and mud. You just paint on the mud with a paintbrush, let it dry out, and then jump in the ocean. Repeat. We also found a public bath with a mud spa! And I came home with plenty of mud beauty products.





We bought some beer in the evening and watched the sunset. Then we walked around and stumbled upon a Korean drum performance by men in DRAG. It was so awesome. I'll add the videos I took of it. Then we ate scallops, mussels, and clams on the grill at a restaurant. We made friends with the group of Korean guys next to us, and they bought us more shells for the grill and gave us beer from the cooler they were carrying around. After that, there was an amazing firework show over the water. I've got that on video too, so check back.





We got coffee the next morning and went for one more mud dip before heading out later that afternoon.

These guys weren't going to miss a good photo opportunity.


Here's Paul with the mud fest characters.


This is a photo from a display of last year's festival. I thought it was really creepy.

The way back was fun because we stopped at all kinds of rest stops. We passed some rivers where people were whitewater rafting. I think that will be my next little trip.


The countryside was so green and lush. Multiply the beauty in this video by 100.