Boryeong Mud Festival

Located on Daecheon Beach is an annual festival known as the Boryeong Mud Festival. The Koreans claim the mud provides skin benefits, but I’m sure most foreigners are just there to play in the mud and abuse their livers! A group of us went to on Friday night with one of the Korean tour groups. We settled into our pensions and called it a night before the festivities started in the morning. The next day we went on the search for breakfast among the local food stands that set up shop along the beach. At lunch our tour group provided us with hamburgers and chili cheese dogs before we headed into the festival for some muddy fun.

In the festival troughs set up filled with mud and paintbrushes to paint yourself with mud. Then once inside there are pools set up filled with wet mud for mud wrestling and inflatable slides slicked down with mud and water. We spent the day going down the slides and running back and forth from the ocean and the majority of the activities.

 

Once the sun went down we cleaned up for dinner and enjoyed fireworks to finish off the night. Unfortunately the rains started at night, but this didn’t stop everyone from having a good time. There were tents set up with food, drinks and music and people had a great time.

The next morning we packed up our things to head home.

Busan

Busan is Korea’s second largest city and located on the southeastern tip of the country. Cortney, Stephanie and I made the trip down on the KTX train. This is Korea’s high speed rail system where the trains travel at speeds of 300 kilometers per hour (or about 190 miles per hour). The train is super efficient and very prompt. We left exactly on time and arrived 2 and a half hours later, just as they stated.

What 300 km/ hr on the KTX looks like. http://youtu.be/dxjOIKi0598

When we arrived at Busan station we took the local subway right to Haeundae Beach where we found a love motel across the street from the beach. We walked into a couple before stumbling upon the Wow Motel. Love motels always pleasantly surprise me in Korea. For 100,000 won we were able to get the VIP suite in the Wow motel where we got one king size and one double bed, 2 computers, a jacuzzi shower and even a wrap around balcony! 

We woke up in the morning, got breakfast and headed down to the beach. We were able to check out the Sand Castle Festival that was happening this weekend where elaborate works of art were set up along the beach. There were also various activities and booths set up along the beach and also an amateur sand castle making area where anyone could enter to make their own sand castle.

We then had dinner at a Mexican restaurant before checking out the local night life.

View from the balcony of the Wow Motel.