I Once Knew a Girl Whose Name Was Mud

Well, Mudd actually, Lauren Mudd to be exact. I wonder what she's up to these days. Anyhow, I spent yesterday with Dylan Thomas at the annual Boryeong Mud Festival. Here we are enjoying the sun and the mud.


The festival takes place in a town called Daechon which is located on Korea's west coast. The mud there is like totally super packed with minerals and meant to be better for you than the mud from the Dead Sea (personally, I found it disappointingly thinner than said Dead Sea mud, and it made my skin dry, but whatevs). At the festival, you can have all sorts of muddy adventures, such as covering yourself in mud (see above), sliding down mud slides, going through a mud-covered obstacle course (shaped like a dragon, no less), wrestling in a pool of muddy water (DT enjoyed this one quite a bit), and going into a jail-like enclosure, where people fling mud at you. There is a mud spa thingy and all sorts of mud beauty products for sale. You can also make mud soaps and mud pottery.

We rolled into town at about 10pm Monday night and found lodging thanks to a fellow at the bus terminal who just happened to be from Ilsan (Where DT lives). In Korea, you can be friends with someone once you find something in common, so we were immediately off on the right foot. After the motel folks were kind enough to build a bed for us (no, really), we headed out to check out the festivities. It quickly became evident that all of the muddiness took place in the day time, but we still managed to run into some friends from English Village, who were in the midst of seeking justice after having been refused entrance to a dance club because they were foreigners. We chatted with them, got the lay of the land and headed back for the night.

On Tuesday we were able to explore some of the aforementioned activities while enjoying beer and sunshine. We had a forced, impromptu photo shoot with a festival PR photographer ("Okay, pose, now running, running. Good!") The people-watching was fantastic. We also took a look around town, playing some games at an arcade and buying snacks, all while covered in mud. We took a swim in the lovely Yellow Sea (which, by the way, is not yellow--who knew?) and, after discovering that I had lost my fabulously awesome watch :( :( :( , we decided it was time to head back to our necks of the woods. We really had no idea where to go, but ended up at an acceptable bus terminal with relatively little difficulty and were relieved to find that we had not missed the last bus back to Ilsan. Tired, and still slightly crud-covered, we slept most of the bus ride back. I'm definitely glad to have checked out such a fun event. It had been quite a number of years since I'd said, "screw getting dirty," and just played in the mud.