Being slippery and filthy isn’t exactly my idea of a great weekend but contrary to my initial thoughts, the Boryeong Mud Festival was an exciting and unique experience. My naive initial position was that I was going to sit on the sidelines and witness the fun instead of partaking in it. The idea of going from pristine clean to a wet sticky mess to a dandruff dust-ball humanoid, when the mud dries, was an outright obnoxious idea to me. Well, my thoughts were trumped, quite easily, when I realized there is no way I am getting out of this place alive. There was mud everywhere and there was no escape. Even when I was walking on the outside of the attraction I was becoming infected with this muddy mess. Everyone was covered in it, from head to toe, so when I bumped into someone or they bumped into me it was smeared on me. Whenever I was walking past the outer gates, I was hit with friendly fire left and right. There was truly no escape and only one option left. Dive in!
The attractions were surprisingly fun and the organizers had set up simply games that encouraged participators to throw the mud on others. I went on several of the attractions, I went up and down the slides, I slid through the pseudo-military style action courses, and played the “spray the person in the middle” game. All of the games were pretty much instructed in Korean so I had to just throw when others did and stop when they did as well. It was an interesting test of body language skills and management. After a few hours of slippin’ and sliddin’ I was wore out. The combo of mud and the sun takes a lot out of ya.
The festival offered a lot of freebies when you purchase your ticket. One of those freebies was to get your body painted. People were getting all kinds of strange designs and symbols painted on them from suns to trees to bow ties to multicolored suits. Unfortunately, the lines were incredibly long and arduous. The wait was worth it because the outcomes were beautiful. I was also able to have an interesting conversation with an older Korean male that involved him buying me a drink and we discussing my history and his. Good experiences seem to always come from the most unpleasurable and unexpected of times.
There was such a great diversity of people there as well. The festival has come to be a great attraction for foreigners in living in South Korea. The festival was started in 1998 and by 2007 there were over 2.2 million visitors a year coming. A large portion of these people were foreigners from the USA, Canada and England but there were also foreigners from India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It was a very interesting conglomeration of people from all over the world enjoying themselves. The music was diverse, the people were diverse, but the atmosphere was very homogeneous. Everyone at this festival was wide smiled and having a blast.
I actually ended up having a really amazing time. I met great people from all over the world. I had wonderful conversations and learned lot more than I thought I would have learned. I was able to let loose and have some fun in the sun. The fact that everyone here was from a different place but we were all having fun without any problems was a testament. A testament to the changes taking place in the world and in our hearts. Joy does not have a specific color skin. Happiness has no specific culture. Boryeong is a little bit of peace on Earth. Push it!
Muddy hell in Boryeong, South Korea is a post from: EARTH EXCURSION