The Boryeong Mud Festival is THE most popular festival among foreigners in all Korea. The idea? Boryeong brings in mud from a nearby mud beach, and foreigners turn out by the busload to paint themselves with it, wrestle in it, slide down it, splash in it, and have people throw buckets of it over their heads. Added to that is the fact that the festival takes place on a large, beautiful beach, and the marts and restaurants stay open into the wee hours of the night. There were so many foreigners there, you could almost forget you were in Korea at all.
The festival was very fun and well worth the trip. For one thing, it's cheap. The entry fee was 5,000 Won, but there was lots of free stuff too, including free mud. For another thing, there's nothing quite like being covered in mud. The lines were really long, though, so it's worth it to get there early (we came up on Friday night) and get a motel near the beach. There are a lot of bare bones "pensions" in walking distance of the festival. They basically consist of a single room with a few sleeping mats in the corner, a TV, and a small kitchen. The floor was super hard and the mats super thin, so we were all sore in the morning, but the price was decent when split between five or six people. I didn't take very many pictures because it's hard to take pictures when your hands are covered in mud, and there are many, many far better pictures online if you just google the festival. However, I did snap a few quick shots, so here they are after the cut.
