The Boryeong Mud Festival -- this was probably one of the highlights of the summer. We first heard about it in January. Even though it wasn't until July, it went on the calendar immediately. It was a long wait, but when July finally arrived, we were ready to get dirty. A festival surrounding playing in mud sounded like so much fun. It did not disappoint.
We recruited some friends and headed for Boryeong. Boryeong is a beach town on the west coast of Korea. It's well known for the healing properties of its mud. Apparently they use it in a lot of make-up, hair products, and skin care products. According to those in Boryeong, the high mineral content in their mud makes it some of the best mud in the world. I can't say I have a lot of experience with mud, but my skin did feel softer the next day. :)
Here we are starting out nice and clean. Not knowing if this mud would wash out, we wore old clothes and swim suits. (And just in case you're wondering, no, I did not get a tattoo on my leg. That's a left over sticker from the Color Me Rad race we did two days before!)
The weather was perfect. And because we went early in the morning, it was almost completely empty. One thing I love about Korea is that Koreans are not morning people. Most Koreans, if given the choice, won't head out until after 10am. That means, if you're willing to get going early in the morning, you can beat all the crowds. That's a huge deal in a country the size of Florida with 50,000,000 people. In Korea, the early bird gets the Mud Festival to herself. It was awesome!
The festival consisted of mud slides, mud pools, mud inflatable obstacle courses, mud painting, mud massages...pretty much anything you can imagine with mud. Emma wanted to try the mud slide first.
Here we are flying into the mud pool below. The slide was fast! Because they run water down the slides to keep them clean there is absolutely no friction. I loved it!
Emma isn't a huge fan of being dirty or going fast though, so when I came up out of the muddy water I wasn't sure if she would be smiling, or crying. She was all smiles. She loved it! I can't begin to count the number of times we went down this slide. It was definitely her favorite thing at the festival.
Here we are enjoying our first mud baths.
I had to make a mud angel.
The kids loved the mud obstacle courses.
They spent the afternoon racing each other through them.
There were actually two sections to the mud festival. One was for families, and the other for anyone over 13 years old. The older area had quite a few different activities. Here are the girls in mud prison. You are forced here if you are too clean. Once inside, the festival workers pound you with mud. There is no need to worry about being too clean after leaving mud prison.
They also had this giant mud pool where you would play fun games in Korean with about 20 other people. Unfortunately for us, we don't speak much Korean. This, though, made it even more fun! We would run around in this pool while the Koreans yanked us from one place to another laughing. At one point, I think we were out because we had to sit in the middle and get splashed with mud by everyone. Who knows, though, maybe we won and this was our prize. Either way it was fun.
At lunch time, they closed down the activities for an hour. We dirtied ourselves up as best we could before we left and took some silly pictures.
After this we headed to the beach. The ocean was the perfect temperature. It felt good to get some of the mud off!
When the festival re-opened, we took advantage of the mud painting. They had various people with different colored mud who would use your body like a canvas and make you beautiful!
The Boryeong Mud Festival was one I will remember for a long time. The kids are still talking about it. For those of you who live in Korea, if you plan on going, I highly recommend going early in the morning and not on a weekend if you are looking for a family friendly experience. By the time we left at 4pm, the college age kids were starting to roll in, and the experience was becoming a lot less innocent (if you know what I mean).
For a bunch of clean Mormons, this was by far the dirtiest day we've had in Korea. :)
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