Playing in the Mud

So, once again, I write a post about 10 days too late, but whatevs.  Last weekend was my trip to Boryeong for Mudfest 2010. And what an unbelievably awesome and fun weekend it was.  I have never been so dirty in my life and I loved every second.

The city of Boryeong started holding the festival between 10 and 15 years ago as a way to promote tourism in the area. Daecheon Beach in Boryeong is really the only sandy beach on the west coast of Korea, which means that in the summertime the vast majority of Koreans travel to the south and east coasts for vacation.  The rest of the west coast is pretty much rocks, pebbles, and mud flats, not the kind of beaches that are good for laying out or playing in the ocean.  Since the mud in the Boryeong area is considered to have health properties that are good for the skin (and god knows Koreans obsess over the quality of their skin), the city thought it would be a great idea to transport some of the mud onto Daecheon Beach and create a free festival where people could come and slather themselves in mud.  Sure, hey, why not?  Over the past decade, it's gone from a couple hundred thousand people to over 2 million people that visit the festival.  It goes on for 9 days (two weekends and the week in between) so there is plenty of time for people to attend when it's convenient for them.

Anne and I went with a Meetup group of about 450 people (!!!) to the opening weekend festivities, which kicked off with a day of pouring rain and cold wind.  Not the most auspicious start, but we figured, hey we're gonna be getting wet and dirty anyway, what does it really matter if it's raining?  I spent my entire Saturday soaked to the bone and had a blast.  The festival boasted giant inflatable slides, mud wrestling pits, mudfights, colored body-painting mud, inflatable obstacle courses and live entertainment.  The common thread?  Mud.  Lots and lots of mud.  Everything was covered in it.  I never knew giant inflatables could be more fun than they already inherently are, but apparently everything is more fun if you just add loads of wet and slippery mud.  It was awesome.

Even better was the utter amazingness of the following day.  Despite the fact that my poor friends back in Seoul had to deal with rain all weekend, Boryeong on Sunday was warm, sunny, and freaking beautiful.  The ocean was warm enough to act as the perfect place to rinse all the mud off your body, the music was loud, and everyone was just having so much fun.  The highlight of my day had to be the giant plastic hamster ball, or at least that's what my friend Siobhan and I called it.  Several entrepreneurial Korean men had brought gigantic clear plastic balls to the beach, which you could step inside while they filled it up with air and

sealed you in.  Then, attached by a rope to a friend who acts as your "safety," you rolled yourself out on to the water so that you could literally run on the water like a hamster in a big wheel.  I haven't laughed so hard in ages.  As hard as I tried to stay standing, running on water is simply not easy!! I must have wiped out about 50 times.  Of course, after about ten minutes, it struck me that I was exerting massive amounts of energy in a totally airtight sphere and it became clear that my oxygen was running out.  Being released from my plastic prison was possibly one of the best feelings I've ever had.  I just fell to the sand and soaked up the fresh air, thinking that suffocation would really be a terrible way to go.

Awesome!!!

I think the thing that struck me most about Mudfest was the fact that something like this could never happen in the US, at least not in its current form.  To start with, everything was free.  No admission fees.  No ride bracelets.  Siobhan, who is from Canada, and I each lamented the fact that in our home countries, we would have to pay for every single thing we wanted to do.  It'd be like going to a county fair or something.  In a similar vein, the nearby restaurants and convenience stores that were being overrun and overwhelmed by foreigners charged the same prices they would charge at any other time of year.  No jacking up water bottles to $5 a pop.  No tiny plastic cups of beer that cost $8.  It was so refreshing to attend something that was genuinely so much fun and not feel like you were being ripped off at every turn.  The organizers really do throw this event for people and not simply to make enormous profits.  I mean, they make plenty of profit by selling their mud products (face and skin creams and the like) and merchandise, but they don't get so greedy that they hijack everyone's wallets at every turn.  It's not capitalism run amok.  Like I said, refreshing.

It was also worth noting that an event like this in the US would probably result in so much rampant alcoholism that you'd have ambulances rushing people to the hospital, fights breaking out, and undoubtedly a stabbing or a shooting somewhere along the way.  Because that's how we do things in America (*insert enormous eye roll*).  The only people I saw who came even close to stepping over any lines were, sadly but not surprisingly, US military dudes.  But overall, the festival was shockingly devoid of problems or drama and it really served to flag up how impossible something like this would be in the US or Europe.  It would be so deeply altered as to be an entirely different event altogether.  Sometimes, I really understand why so many people choose to stay in Korea for so long.  While the attitudes or seeming lack of logic among many Koreans can be infuriating at times, there are many ways in which this country feels infinitely more civilized than Western nations.  Ironically, considering the situation with the DPRK up north, Korea is nothing if not peaceful and safe.