Mudfest!

I've got some pictures now so it's time to post about mudfest and last weekend in general. Here's the cliffnotes. Friday was a school sponsored "field trip" for the foriegn teachers to the DMZ (demilitarized zone), followed by one of th palaces and shopping in Insadong. Also a call to wish my wonderful wife a happy birthday :) Saturday meant getting up early to catch a bus to Boryeong and Mudfest. Sunday morning and afternoon in Boryeong with the night reserved for unwinding and recovery. Now for the details.

The those who dont know, the DMZ is the area between North and South Korea. It's a thin strip of land between the two where, excepting certain heavily watched roads, neither army goes and nothing is built (though apparently the whole thing is filled with mines). Its kind of crazy. Each side has various things just across the border. For instance North Korea has a "propaganda village" which means a nice tidy perfect looking little village with a huge flag pole and accompanying flag. South Korea on the other hand has tourist facilities. Shows the contrast between the two quite nicely doesn't it? There were a ton of restrictions on pictures sadly so we dont have any good shots. Part of this trip was getting to go into the "3rd invasion tunnel." The North Koreans are pretty determined it seems. They've dug three tunnels that we know of across the DMZ and possibly more. Of the three that have found two are now tourist attractions. It was a steep 11% incline down to the actually tunnel. We wore hardhats in the tunnel because of the low ceilings. Melissa was short enough it didn't really matter but Aaron and I would have been in a world of hurt without them. We each bumped our heads at least ten times. Afterward the field trip was supposed to go to one of the palaces followed by shopping in Insadong but the weather was really crappy. So a lot of people, including my little expeditionary group, opted out. Instead we went to Namdaemun. Namdaemun is the primary shopping center for the country. It is also the site of a burnt down national teasure. Seems "The South Gate", from whence the area got its name, was burnt down by a disgruntled citizen. See in Korea land is a huge and solid investment. This citizen invested a lot in land then had the government forcibly buy it out from under him at a fraction of its worth ruining him. He decided the correct nswer was to burn down a 600+ year old national treasure. I kinda can't blame him but I bet the jail time has made him reconsider his position on the matter. Len really wanted to check out some camera stores and Namdaemun has a camera district. We did so then vacated the premises and made our way to the much loved Smokey Saloon for burgers. This was a trickier than usual proposition due to a torrential downpour. The trade off was no line to get our burgers for once. I accepted this trade, ate burger, then headed home. Now Saturday was going to be a long day. In order to catch the bus to Mudfest we were going to have to get up at about 5 am. Instead of doing that we all opted for early naps at our respective home followed by getting up at 1am and hanging out until it was time to go then trying to catch some zzz's on the bus. Great Success!

After catching our bus then sleeping on it we found ourselves at the Boryeong mud flats. They gave us some snacks and free beer (mine was passed on to Aaron). We went and played for a bit on the well packed mud flats before being called in to change into some camo pants and long sleeved shirts. The whole time they were pumping some pretty crappy music out at us. I'm pretty sure they played "Toxic" by Britney Spear at least four times. Not sure if they were trying to tell us something or not. We got changed but missed the beginning activity; all the guys split into two teams and tryed to toss each other out of a "ring" defined by a rope. Kinda sad I missed it. The next activity was a game of mud rugby. The girls had their own seperate rugby game. It was a good time for sure. I did alright when I had the energy to do anything. I wore out pretty quickly. Afterwards we built me an impressive mud hump. No pics though, far too muddy for a camera. Though the Adventure Korea (the company I went through) people had cameramen wandering and they took pics. They may even be up on their website at some point. We built a mud castle but it's was pretty pitiful for the amount of work we had to put in. Afterwards we showered and reloaded onto the bus to hit Boryeong proper. The rest of the night was spent dinking around town and exploring. Our hotel was right next to the beach so it was quite beautiful. Then sleep.

We had until about 4pm to do as we wished. Despite it being mudfest and many mud related activities being available, we all decided we'd much rather play in the ocean and on the beach. We found a spot to set our towels out and the rented a couple inner tubes. Aaron and I spent a bunch of time playing around in the water while Mel relaxed up on the beach. Mostly we swam out past the breaks, got up into our tubes, and relaxed until the swells dragged us far enough in for the waves to break. Then we tried to catch the biggest and best break and ride it into shore so we could do it all over again. Mel joined us for a bit before going off in search of some lunch for us all.

After lunch we began the greatest achievement of the weekend. Our sandcastle! Heck yeah sandcastle. We just kind of went for it since we lacked the tools of true sand artists but we sure had a fun time! Mel made it lok all pretty and Aaron and I did the grunt work.

Good times. The trip home was more bus and more sleeping. It was a weekend to be remembered for sure. It was so nice to play in the ocean. I only wish we hadn't been surrounded by a thousand+ other people. Well worth the price, which included a wicked sunburn. I'm mostly recovered now and ready to tackle my 29th birthday weekend!