Mud is for big kids too!

For one week every year, the city of Boryeong hosts Mud Festival.  An event intended to promote the mud's rich, natural, cosmetic properties.  

However, that idea when out the window a few years back; now it's just a chance for waygooks to come and relive Spring Break for a few days.  Top activities include: drinking, getting muddy, cleaning off in the ocean, getting muddy, mud wrestling, mud slide, drinking, cleaning off in the ocean, and somewhere along the days events you eat some chicken and pizza.

My expereince with Mudfest started at 5am on Saturday morning (7/16).  A rough time to wake up, but I had an hour transit within Busan to get to the meeting spot and then 5 hours on the road to get to Boryeong.  

The day had to start early in order to allow for a full day of muddy mayhem!  However, rain, not mud, was the first thing we encountered.

A short stroll and we were at our pension, still standing in the rain as we worked out who was in what room.  What's a pension?  Well, it's an empty house that guest can pay cheap rates to sleep/shower.  You get what you pay for though.  Our penison was going to provided sleeping/shower services to 87 people!!  The lower rooms were smaller, limiting the number of people in them.  Not my room.  I was on the top floor - a room for 40!  Time to get cozy to your neighbor! ;)

A quick change and it was time for mud!  Or beers and food first.  Definitely needed beers for the courage to get muddy.  The whole week leading up to Mudfest I was soo nervous.  I don't know what's happened to me.  I used to be very sporty - mud wouldn't have been a problem - but now... eeeee!  Can't do it!! Or at least I didn't think I could...

But back to the timeline!

We head out in the direction of the mud and stop at a food tent for the amazingly tasty combo of pizza, chicken and beers!  A large bill later and on to the mud!  Nope, more beers first :)  Remember I did say this was Spring Break relived!

Now it was time for mud!  But you can't actually get to the mud without waiting in long lines that wind their way slowly towards giant blow-up events (ie mud slide, mud pool, mud wrestling). Who came here to wait in line!?  Not really what I was imagining:  Mud festival = big-blow-up-bouncey-things-slicked-down-with-mud.  

See the full gallery on Posterous

A bit more beer, a Long Island Ice Tea made extra strong with an extra splash of gin and next thing you know I've "slipped" over the edge of the mud wrestling ring and am trying to take down a few of my guys friends (who have roughly 50lbs and several inches on me) only to go down like a leaf every time!  Didn't stop me though!!  I kept charging.  If it wasn't enough to do mud wrestling, I continued to wrestle - but really it wasn't wrestling, more like "lift up Meagan and throw her down" - on the beach and in the ocean.  What a mess.

Two skinned knees, a scrapped butt, and a bump on the head; it was time to call it quits and settle down for the night.  Of course we didn't really call it quits, more just toned it down enough to have dinner, get cleaned up and head back out to the beach to watch fireworks while drinking some more beers.  A late night round of pizza, chicken and beers and a few of us were ready for bed around 2am.