Well, as promised I made my trip to the Boryeong Mudfestival this weekend, and as usual it was a fun little adventure. I woke up bright and early, around 6am, and without an alarm clock(!) on Saturday morning. Packed, got ready, attempted to call some people in Minnesota, and left for the bus. I'm sure you're wondering why I would need to get up so ungodly early just to roll around in mud, but much to our dismay we could not reserve tickets for this event, so we had to be their at the crack of dawn to ensure everyone got a ticket. On top of that, we soon found out that this particular bus would not be assigning seats, so if you didn't want to get stuck with some smelly foreigner (aka people like us) you had to line up just to get on the bus.
People waiting on the floor
People sitting on the floor.
This is where coming super early came in handing, because the line was long, not everyone got on, AND the last people on the bus were stuck sitting cross legged crouched on the floor for that entire time. Thank god that wasn't me. I was sitting next to Dom, allowing me to use her for watching The Office on her snazzy iTouch. Man, I want one of those. But, in return, I did her hair in cute pig tails, see oh so pretty!
Seconds after we arrived it began to down pour even more than it already had been so we quickly hailed the first cab to our hotel. Now, I know that this is a big festival, but we literally got raped for the price of our shitty one bed love motel room. I'd like to add that I got raped the most by being the only one to volunteer to sleep on the floor. The four of us had to pay a total of 150,000 Won for this room. Normally, it'd go for like 30,000. But, after the mess of mud, dirt, sand, and water we made... I guess they deserve it.
So we got ready and took a few pictures:
Then we made our plan for the day:
First, we would eat lunch. During that lunch we would devour multiple bottles of soju and beer. Then, we would hit the beach, during that time we would devour multiple bottles of soju and beer. Finally, we would come back, shower, get ready and go out for the night. During this time we would also devour multiple bottles of soju and beer. In case you haven't figured this out already, this Mud Festival definitely wasn't a "cultural" experience. Unfortunately, our plan was flawed. I soon found out that amongst the bottles of soju and beer I had forgotten to drink water. I also found out that I had sort of forgotten to eat a big lunch while we were there. It was more like a light snack to accompany my soju and beer drinking. Heres a few shots from lunch:
As you can imagine, by the time phase one was done, we were already..well.. drunk. We happily stumbled along the boardwalk and searched for our first mud covering adventure. As luck would have it, one of the first people I drunkenly stumbled upon was my old co-worker from back home at RCC, Nick. He had originally moved to Korea a handful of months before me and vouched for its awesomeness. So we had a short reunion, talked about how much better Korea is (sorry RCC friends) and took some pictures, oh and of course drank some soju and beer.
By this time it was, well, I don't know, later in the day? So we sat down, regrouped, and decided a giant mud filled slide was necessary. So we got in line and waited, and waited, and waited some more, and got bored and took turns jumping into a giant pool of mud, and continued to wait in this line. I'm pretty sure we waited at least an hour and a half. As luck would have it, while I was literally almost up the slide they said the slide was closed for the day. So that was a big waste of time.
At some point we made the logical decision to get out of our mud covered clothes, shower, and get ready for the night.. We had to stop for a corn dog and a cocktail baggie on the way home. Oh, yes, the cocktail baggie is great. Just imagine a plastic baggie, the size of a Capri Sun, filled with whatever cocktail you want so its portable AND delicious.
Whilst getting ready Dominique promptly passed out for the night and the three remaining headed towards food. We then got fiscally taken advantage of yet again, and Fliss decided she was done for. Holli and I spent the rest of the evening being awesome, meeting fun people, and actually making it to bed at a decent hour!
As I woke up I realized that that hour definitely wasn't decent enough. I was hit with a flow of agonizing pain ranging from my uncomfortable just-slept-on-the-floor-body, my missing chunk of skin from my toe, my many mosquito bites, and of course all the pain that comes with a day of drinking. We all slowly scrambled to gather what we could see/remember in our hotel room and scooted out of there in order to get home and into our own beds as soon as physically possible. Holli couldn't scoot at our slow pace and decided to wait behind.
When we got to the bus station at 10:00am we were more than displeased to hear that the next bus to Gwangju wasn't until 1:30. However, at 11:30 there would be a bus to Jeonju, and we could easily get a bus almost anytime from Jeonju to Gwangju, so we decided to go for that. This bus ride was pleasant, lots of space, and nicely air conditioned. I'll tell you about the other bus ride in a minute..
Once in Jeonju I remembered the awesome chicken place we went to on Lucy's Birthday and tried to find it for a good half hour. Luckily, Zaid was willing to put up with a few phone calls from me lost and confused and we finally got there to eat the most delicious spicy potato chicken meal EVER. I did also learn that eating extremely hot food on a extremely hot day when you're extremely hungover doesn't mix well. But I suppose that's obvious.
Finally we boarded our last bus home. It felt like it might be the last bus of my entire life if he wasn't a bit more careful with his driving. He swerved, swayed, and zoomed across the Korean highway and if he wasn't fully intoxicated I'd be surprised.. Or at least ashamed for his terrrrrrible driving skills.
Now it's Tuesday. I'll be leaving the Land of Morning Calm Thursday and landing in Sweden late Thursday night and I will hopefully be having a blast by Friday A.M. Of course look forward to lots of good pictures and hopefully some good posts too! Love ya!
Ah, If you want to see a few more pictures without me and my drunk friends, check this out..
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