#mudrin

The Boryeong Mud festival is a weekend of fun so debauched it needs to be on every self-respecting traveler’s wish list. To some of the more adventurous Koreans, it’s a chance to let their hair down. For the American GIs, it’s a chance to blow off steam. For the Boryeong locals it’s a chance to make stacks of cash. And for me…well, it was my chance to enjoy the whole absurd carnival of it.

Having read online beforehand about the no-holds-barred nature of the festival, I decided to check myself into the finest and most prominent hotel in town, the Mudrin. When I arrived in the afternoon, the place was already in full swing, but you wouldn’t have known it inside the Mudrin. The swirling madness was kept strictly at the door, and the calm tranquility of the inside came as a shock akin to rolling in the snow after a sauna.

If the lobby had seemed like a safe haven, my room in this luxury hotel felt like it was on a different planet. I had a magnificent view of the entire beach. There were people in the water for miles, throngs of them hugging the coastline and partying on the beaches all the way up the sand. I knew several of my friends would sleeping in the pensions, and some of them would probably end up sleeping on the beach itself. I glanced around my pristine surrounds and hoped that it would look as good in the morning.

Having changed, I clambered downstairs and gleefully braved the maelstrom. There was a central area with bouncy castle rides that would coat you in mud from head to foot in grey mud, as well as offering the opportunity to mud-wrestle with between 10 and 20 perfect strangers. At one point I’d battled my way to a standing position only to have my legs whipped out from underneath me in the slime, much to the small audience’s enjoyment.

This was followed by Korean fighter jets putting on an extended airshow over the beach. Everywhere you looked people were buying soju and cases of beer and sharing them with anybody they liked. Korean photographers from every media outlet under the sun took pictures of the revellers, including me wearing the sunglasses I found in the sea and coated in grey goop.

As night fell, the party atmosphere cranked up- fairy lights and neon strips glowed everywhere you looked. Having washed off most of the mud, my friends and I walked along the beach front, enjoying the opulent fireworks display and the barbecued shellfish being sold from carts. The whole experience morphed into one gargantuan celebration, although what we were celebrating I couldn’t have said. It seemed as if the entire world stayed out until the sun began to come up.