Boryeong Mudfest

I have been to many festivals in Korea this past year, but none have been quite as insane as the Boryeong Mud Festival. This area of Korea is known for its famous healing Boryeong mud which is made into numerous bathroom products such as soap or shampoo. To celebrate their fantastic products and advertise them they created this festival which happens once a year bringing foreigners and Koreans to the area with the hopes of getting dirty! The participants of the festival are completely immersed in mud in the numerous attractions they have at hand for this celebration. Participants can enjoy mud wrestling, mud sliding, a mud prison, and even ‘swimming’ in a huge mud pool. There are attractions for the kids and adults, and as you look around all you can see is a grayish mud covering every inch of peoples bodies. In the evening there is a huge concert which goes on late into the night and fireworks to celebrate this special time of year.

I went with two of my friends feeling a little apprehensive as to what we were going to see. We arrived after a 4 hour bus ride to a city that was packed full of foreigners. It was so weird to walk around and hear people speaking English! It is a totally forgotten concept that I could chime in on a conversation, eavesdrop, or ask the person next to me for help. Once I saw all of the pools of mud and slides all I could think was “Let’s do this.”   

My girlfriends and I headed off to the ‘colored mud’ table where we waited in line for almost an hour to get the best painter available to make our bodies a work of art! When she started to paint my body it was so cold and felt so weird! I kept laughing and trying not to touch it while it was wet! 

I had ‘mud’ written on my arm, a heart on my face, and flowers running down my torso. My friends looked just as awesome, and we walked around being followed by Korean paparazzi.

Literally the photographers were insane and a little excessive! They would put their camera lens only a few inches away from my face and I was supposed to just stand still so they could capture my mud covered face. It was totally bizarre and hysterical to see this paparazzi just running around taking pictures of everyone! If you dared pose for a photo for your OWN camera, you had to be ready to have 5-10 other cameras snap the same shot! It was so awkward and made me realize I could NEVER be famous. I’ve got no patience for that!

Anyway, after we finished getting colored mud painted on us we entered the activity area! The first one we decided to do was some mud wrestling. I became totally covered in the gray mud as my friends threw it on me, splashed me, and pulled me down into a pool of it! I had mud coming out of my eyes for the next 24 hours thanks to this activity, but how many people can say they have mud wrestled? Sure I’m no Summer Rae with my wrestling skills but I sure got down and dirty in that stuff!

While everyone was tossing themselves around in the mud a fantastic air show started with jets speeding across the sky in different shapes and drawing different patterns in the clouds. I have never seen one, so I was totally in awe!

We then went into the mud prison where we stood in between bars and had two Korean men throw buckets of mud onto us. The men must have been loving it as they would throw the mud buckets at us in full force! I had my eyes closed and my ears plugged and all of a sudden I felt a slap of mud on my face, and then body, and then face again! It hit me so hard I almost fell over! A true muddy punishment for being in prison! When it was done I looked at my friend and all we could do was laugh at the intensity of this silly activity both saying ‘oh my gosh!’ They succeeded in not only getting mud all over our bodies, but well into our ears, down our bathing suits, in our mouths, and up our nose. We got a complete and total muddy experience. They weren’t playing around….

There were so many activities but we didn’t have a chance to do them all. The lines were insanely long and after 3 hours of mud-play you kind of just want to get clean. So we walked onto the beach and dove into the sea. The water washed off our colorful and dirty bodies, and we could finally see our skin again! I looked around at the beach and in the ocean and just got this smirk on my face. There were so many foreigners and Koreans going crazy for this mud and living it up at this festival. There was a mixture of English and Korean being spoken, there were people sunbathing and people hiding in tents from the sun, but the common theme was mud-loving smiles across the beach. 

Once we were somewhat clean, thanks to the sea, we headed back to our hotel for a shower.

This festival was such a unique experience that was totally once in a lifetime.  I’m sure I will never be covered in mud again, but I am very OK with that. We got down and dirty, covered in all different colored mud, and had so many laughs. And even got some muddy souvenirs for my family!