Boryeong Mud Festival 2013, Black Eagles.

Daecheon Beach, Korea

Mud festival information.

A map of Boryeong/Daecheon area.

Train station.

There's E-mart.. I suggest getting things there before you head down to the beach. Like some food things and such if you are camping, or going to cook yourself and not eat out (or if you don't like seafood!)

So here's the scoop. Basically you get a train ticket to this place called Daecheon and you grab a taxi and head to the beach area. You see the crowd of people (mostly foreigners) and that's where you'll find the mud festival! Easy enough, right!?

Places to stay:

Well there's lots of minbaks (korean guest houses) basically a room for sleeping with a tv and AC (luckily), a shower room, a toilet and a kitchen area. Ours was like 18,000 a person. There are also some hotels around.

Travel:

The best way to get to Daecheon (at least from Cheongju) is by train. It was about 3.5 hours from the time I left my house till we got there. About 2 hours on the train. Got off and then headed towards the beach (get a cab, it's the easiest way and it's about 10,000 won).















We were off to get MUDDY!

And that's when this happened....

As we were about to go in to the festival party, fighter jets rolled in.... I jumped and screamed and FREAKED! I was soooo happy. Our group (of 9 girls) were trying to get ready to go in to the festival and I just couldn't concentrate.. I was like sorry, these fighters are just so much cooler than ANYTHING else right now.

They are the Black Eagles, a Korean group of fighter jets that they use for shows and such. They are amazing!! At one point I thought it might be over, but just then one flew right over my head, super low -- I screamed and grabbed my friends' arm. I was scared, happy, shocked, terrified. giddy, amazed all at the same time! So many EMOTIONS!

Ok, so when the show finally ended I was able to go back to concentrating on the mud.

What is the mud festival?

Basically it's a caged off area where you pay (6,000 won) to go in a get to jump around and play on blow up jump house things, all while being covered with mud and getting more mud thrown at you! We did an obstacle course and a slide, the lines were sooo long we had to wait forever to do anything! So that was kind of annoying. But it was still really fun and being covered in mud was actually quite enjoyable to my surprise!

It's kind of confusing about when you can go in and such. We had a 'entry time', when we were allowed to go in and then it closed around 6. We bought our tickets ahead of time, which was good because they had all sold out that day (I guess they only let a certain number of people in!)

After there was a DJ playing some music down on the beach, which was complete with a mist-machine (our shower). Then it was ocean time, which washed the mud off even more but then the mud got replaced with sand (not better). The ocean was intense, super strong and big waves - which I was not expecting but at least it was warm (oddly). I lost my sunglasses in the madness. (3 pairs were lost that day in our group... oops).




Let me just say, a shower with clean water never felt so good. Even if it was a 'Korean shower' where we had to use a bucket.



Sunset.

I could spend every night watching the sunset over the ocean, feeling the ocean breeze, smelling the salty air and the sand in my toes and never get tired of it. EVER. I love it. It's absolutely beautiful, peaceful, calming and AMAZING!

Dinner.

....of course seafood. Because when you're at/on/near the ocean, you've just gotta eat seafood. We found a little restaurant that served all you can eat clams, muscles, shrimp, samgyupsal (pork - kind of like bacon), and other random seafood shelled things for 14,000 won a person. Pretty awesome!

Notice the white M. Jackson gloves. That was so we could just man-handle the clams right off the grill and eat them! Quite clever really and it worked, we walked out without any burns! Success.

Here's a great example of the food chain. Small crab --> Clam --> ME. P.S. I didn't eat the small crab.

Sunday.

I was up decently early because I mean sleeping on the floor, it's not horrible but it's not exactly the best sleep ever. Plus I wanted to go back to the mud area to get some pictures and hang out by the ocean. So that's what Trisha and I did... we went on a little mud adventure while the rest were sleeping!

We got some facial mud masks..

And then this happened.... Yup that's a bunch of Korean photographers taking pictures of me rubbing mud on my stomach. I had no idea what to do or where to look. And I'll just say I much prefer being behind the camera. However, it was good to get a taste of my own medicine, I guess!

Mudded up!

Then we found this little guy? girl? idk...  anyway... A Black Eagle pilot! So of course we had to get pictures. Some nice Korean photographer grabbed my camera and started snapping away!

It was a great weekend, I would highly recommend checking out the mud festival. Take a few friends and go check it out! It's a beautiful area and being covered in smooth, cold mud is quite enjoyable.

It wouldn't be complete without a picture of the beautiful rice fields. This area had a ton of rice fields, with beautiful mountains in the background. It was amazing to watch the rice move in the wind!