The Boryeong Mud Festival is now a world famous festival in Boryeong, South Korea. They take mud from the mud flats surrounding the ocean side city and bring it into the town and set up a wide variety of attractions. They even use the mud to make cosmetics and other products that they say significantly improves ones skin.
There are mud pools, slides, wrestling pits and even a mud soccer arena. It is the one time a year that you will actually see Koreans excited to get dirty. Some even believe the longer you go without showering after the more luck you will have. But that superstition has not been very popular recently for obvious reasons.
We went with the 'Enjoy Korea' travel company and left from Daegu Saturday morning and drove 3+ hours to the event. We then spent several hours playing in the mud despite the weather being cold and windy. That evening there was a free concert on the beach, this year was exciting because the main act was Psy which is one of the few Korean artists that all Foreigners know.
The next day there were more mud events which were fun to watch from behind the glass of a local cafe. The entire festival was packed with old Koreans with cameras more expensive than all of my belongings put together. This was fun to watch as they all crowd around any group of foreigners that they see and take hundreds of pictures. Because what is a Korean festival without thousands of pictures as proof you were there?
Overall the festival was a lot of fun and is a great way to meet people from across the country. You even get a chance to get up close and personal with them with all the mud wrestling there is to do!
