The Infamous Mud Festival
Here's a little something for any of you out there still check this thing, It's a nice night of pouring rain right now and I am in no mood to do anything but sit on my arse so I figured blogging would be perfect
Just went to the mud festival in a town called Boryeong this weekend, and it was an absolute blast... It's kind of known as the unofficial foreigners' festival, and it was definitely that. The amount of English I heard in the past two days was shocking.
I should go back to the beginning. Friday night I went down south to hang out with a few friend's that I haven't seen for a while and the plan was to sleep there and wake up early to grab our 5:30 am train down to Boryeong. But as is usual in Korea, whatever the plan is is nowhere near what actually happens, and so we grabbed dinner, went to the batting cage for a little bit, and ended up in a local bar where all the foreigners seem to go. Met a bunch of cool people, and played a good game of poker there with some nice chips that lasted about until 3 am, me and Andy were the two men left standing and by the time we got to 'heads up' play, we played about 3 hands and just split the pot. After that me and Andy took off to go meet some more friends in Anyang which is where we had to grab the train, so we went to the hip hop dance club (which in itself is another lengthy blog, so just ask me about it sometime) there till about 5:00 and headed to the train station. We met up with the rest of the crowd, grabbed the train and took the 3 hour ride to Boryeong, of which I got about 45 minutes of sleep, because my ticket was 'standing room only' even though the train was empty, but people kept waking me up and telling me I was in there seat. Bad luck, I guess.
So once we made it to Boryeong, the crowd I was with found a nice little place called Motel Coconut to stay at after a little bargaining, and we hit the beach right away, swimming in the ocean felt amazing and the water was perfect, it made me feel even more excited about my upcoming thailand trip. Next came the mud, there is this mud at a nearby beach that is supposed to have some sort of therapeutic effect, so they take it from that beach (which I guess is too small) and ship it to the huge beach that we were at and make a festival out of it. We got good and muddied up from head to toe and did a little of the mud festivities... There was a massive mud slide, and some mud obstacle courses, and tons and tons more, but I spent pretty much all of my time in the big mudwrestling pit, which was like a massive kiddy pool with a padded floor that you could wrestle random people at, and also they chucked a couple of balls in there to try to play keep-away with. This was really fun because the mud made the balls really slippery so it just became a chaotic pile of muddy bodies with a ball bouncing around. After that we headed back to the motel for a much welcomed nap, and when I woke up I found that the rest of my friends (the ones I had gotten the condo with) had just arrived. So I gave them a call grabbed my stuff, said goodbye to the people I came with, and walked down to meet them. On the way I saw the only other guy in Korea from King's College by random chance, Moby (or Adam for those who call him that), small world.
The group of people we got the condo with were so awesome... Many of them I had never met before, as the place we had was a medium sized room which we crowded 19 people into, but we all basically hung out for the entire rest of the time though we were always in separate little groups kind of mingling around and always changing. We went to the mudwrestling pit and I got muddied up for the second time that day after which we went and washed off in the ocean and did a little body surfing with some huge waves. They tossed me around good and hardand kind of scraped me on the sand a couple times, but it was worth it, and at least all the mud was good and washed off by the time we got out. In the background there was a bunch of Korean 'lifeguards' standing on the beach blowing their whistles constantly, trying to get everyone out of the water. It got pretty pathetic, not one person was listening to them, and people were coming in and out of the water as they pleased, so it basically turned into just an annoying background noise.
After the second mud soakage, I was pretty much done with anything mud-related, so we just hung out on the beach for about an hour or two and then went to grab some dinner at a seafood restaurant. We stuck around there and then went back to the main area and talked and drank beer for a long while until probably about 1 am. That was when the real fun began. we bought a ball at a convenience store and started a game of kickball on the beach and got a bunch of random people to join and it became a big crowd. That lasted for only about half an hour, and we changed it to a soccer game. It was the funnest game of soccer I have ever played, it was just so ideal. We worked it out to a 7 on 7 game of Korea vs. the World, and it got pretty competitive. It was the situation that made it so awesome though, I stopped myself a couple of times to just think 'Playing soccer on the beach in korea at 3 am with some of the coolest people, it just doesn't get much better.' I think us foreigners wore out the koreans though, we stopped playing at around 4:30 or so, I don't think anyone was much looking at their watches by then. We then mosied on down the beach and stumbled into the condo and I somehow found some floorspace amidst the 19 people and hit the hay for a couple of hours.
The next day was pretty uneventful, the lack of sleep/shower for 3 days I think finally got to me, and I basically was in a trance until I made it home (barely, I almost missed the train back). I just fell down into bed and slept for what probably would have been a record-breaking sleep, but my friend stopped by and woke me up. We watched a movie and he just left and then I figured I wanted to be awake for a little longer so I started writing this blog which brings us right up to date ( and should explain the sleep-drunk vibe of this blog :p ).
Sorry about the lack of pictures, but I barely took my camera out the whole weekend because I was almost always wet or muddy or both. My buddy Mike has a digital waterproof camer and he took a bunch so I'll probably steal his and put it onto my msnspace in the next little while (The link for that is down the page a little bit on another post)
Just went to the mud festival in a town called Boryeong this weekend, and it was an absolute blast... It's kind of known as the unofficial foreigners' festival, and it was definitely that. The amount of English I heard in the past two days was shocking.
I should go back to the beginning. Friday night I went down south to hang out with a few friend's that I haven't seen for a while and the plan was to sleep there and wake up early to grab our 5:30 am train down to Boryeong. But as is usual in Korea, whatever the plan is is nowhere near what actually happens, and so we grabbed dinner, went to the batting cage for a little bit, and ended up in a local bar where all the foreigners seem to go. Met a bunch of cool people, and played a good game of poker there with some nice chips that lasted about until 3 am, me and Andy were the two men left standing and by the time we got to 'heads up' play, we played about 3 hands and just split the pot. After that me and Andy took off to go meet some more friends in Anyang which is where we had to grab the train, so we went to the hip hop dance club (which in itself is another lengthy blog, so just ask me about it sometime) there till about 5:00 and headed to the train station. We met up with the rest of the crowd, grabbed the train and took the 3 hour ride to Boryeong, of which I got about 45 minutes of sleep, because my ticket was 'standing room only' even though the train was empty, but people kept waking me up and telling me I was in there seat. Bad luck, I guess.
So once we made it to Boryeong, the crowd I was with found a nice little place called Motel Coconut to stay at after a little bargaining, and we hit the beach right away, swimming in the ocean felt amazing and the water was perfect, it made me feel even more excited about my upcoming thailand trip. Next came the mud, there is this mud at a nearby beach that is supposed to have some sort of therapeutic effect, so they take it from that beach (which I guess is too small) and ship it to the huge beach that we were at and make a festival out of it. We got good and muddied up from head to toe and did a little of the mud festivities... There was a massive mud slide, and some mud obstacle courses, and tons and tons more, but I spent pretty much all of my time in the big mudwrestling pit, which was like a massive kiddy pool with a padded floor that you could wrestle random people at, and also they chucked a couple of balls in there to try to play keep-away with. This was really fun because the mud made the balls really slippery so it just became a chaotic pile of muddy bodies with a ball bouncing around. After that we headed back to the motel for a much welcomed nap, and when I woke up I found that the rest of my friends (the ones I had gotten the condo with) had just arrived. So I gave them a call grabbed my stuff, said goodbye to the people I came with, and walked down to meet them. On the way I saw the only other guy in Korea from King's College by random chance, Moby (or Adam for those who call him that), small world.
The group of people we got the condo with were so awesome... Many of them I had never met before, as the place we had was a medium sized room which we crowded 19 people into, but we all basically hung out for the entire rest of the time though we were always in separate little groups kind of mingling around and always changing. We went to the mudwrestling pit and I got muddied up for the second time that day after which we went and washed off in the ocean and did a little body surfing with some huge waves. They tossed me around good and hardand kind of scraped me on the sand a couple times, but it was worth it, and at least all the mud was good and washed off by the time we got out. In the background there was a bunch of Korean 'lifeguards' standing on the beach blowing their whistles constantly, trying to get everyone out of the water. It got pretty pathetic, not one person was listening to them, and people were coming in and out of the water as they pleased, so it basically turned into just an annoying background noise.
After the second mud soakage, I was pretty much done with anything mud-related, so we just hung out on the beach for about an hour or two and then went to grab some dinner at a seafood restaurant. We stuck around there and then went back to the main area and talked and drank beer for a long while until probably about 1 am. That was when the real fun began. we bought a ball at a convenience store and started a game of kickball on the beach and got a bunch of random people to join and it became a big crowd. That lasted for only about half an hour, and we changed it to a soccer game. It was the funnest game of soccer I have ever played, it was just so ideal. We worked it out to a 7 on 7 game of Korea vs. the World, and it got pretty competitive. It was the situation that made it so awesome though, I stopped myself a couple of times to just think 'Playing soccer on the beach in korea at 3 am with some of the coolest people, it just doesn't get much better.' I think us foreigners wore out the koreans though, we stopped playing at around 4:30 or so, I don't think anyone was much looking at their watches by then. We then mosied on down the beach and stumbled into the condo and I somehow found some floorspace amidst the 19 people and hit the hay for a couple of hours.
The next day was pretty uneventful, the lack of sleep/shower for 3 days I think finally got to me, and I basically was in a trance until I made it home (barely, I almost missed the train back). I just fell down into bed and slept for what probably would have been a record-breaking sleep, but my friend stopped by and woke me up. We watched a movie and he just left and then I figured I wanted to be awake for a little longer so I started writing this blog which brings us right up to date ( and should explain the sleep-drunk vibe of this blog :p ).
Sorry about the lack of pictures, but I barely took my camera out the whole weekend because I was almost always wet or muddy or both. My buddy Mike has a digital waterproof camer and he took a bunch so I'll probably steal his and put it onto my msnspace in the next little while (The link for that is down the page a little bit on another post)
posted by yonnybee at 7:33 AM
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