We arrived in Daecheon Beach around 11pm. Normally, arriving anywhere in South Korea without reservations isn't a problem - at the very least there are nearly always super-cheap yeogwans or minbaks (very cheap, basic motels; minbaks don't have beds) available for $30 or less. Well, turns out that was not the case at Daecheon Beach during the Boryeong Mud Festival! Nearly every room of every sort was full. We were beginning to debate giving up and sleeping on the beach when we finally found a minbak with a room available... for the price-gouged rip off of $150/night. You'd think that for $150 we'd've landed ourselves a pretty swank room. Sadly, what we got was a teeny-tiny bedless minbak room with bedding so dirty we didn't dare touch it, and a bathroom with only a toilet - with pee on the seat and no toilet paper.
Classy, ain't it?
The day was stunningly gorgeous!
This statue welcomed us to the beach.
Daecheon Beach was incredibly beautiful
Just look at that incredible sky!
We'd had the impression that we'd literally be wallowing in mud-pits or something. Instead, we made our way down to the festival area, where at various stations people were painting themselves with mud using buckets of mud and paintbrushes.
I love this shot of the kid painting his grandfather.
This thingy was one of the festival mascots.
I look very insane...
Rob paints himself with mud
Muddy!
In addition to stations where you could paint yourself, there were all sorts of muddy activities, including mud wrestling (or, as they called it, "suvival fight")
although I certainly took pictures and videos for your viewing pleasure :-)
Hot Asian girls mud wrestling - w00t! (And dudes too!)
Mud-wrestling girls
The festival was packed full of foreigners, and sadly, many were incredibly obnoxious. It was as if someone had scooped up a beach-full of drunken frat-boys and sorority girls from spring break in Panama City or Daytona or somewhere, and dropped them smack dab in the middle of a Korean festival... and yet the partiers were too intoxicated to notice the difference. The Koreans were apprently prepared for the fact that the drunken foreign masses might prefer to eat at something other than Korean seafood, and thus they created this:
Yep, this was where they corralled us all at feeding time.
I ordered a cheese sandwich.
They were out of cheese and substituted fried egg.
(Melissa, remember "You can't go wrong with a cheese sandwich"? Sigh.)
Daecheon Beach is home to the scariest looking amusement park ever.
There I am in the ocean, reflected.
We climbed up some crazy rocks at the end of the beach.
And built a sand castle,
which was immediately washed away from the tide.
As you can see, the last train back into Daegu from CheonanAsan was packed.
6 comments:
This looks like so much fun I want to scream. What's up with the amusement park being called "Fillland?" Filled with what? Scary.
Yeah! for getting dirty. I'm not sure if it would have been more or less silly with the "spring break foreigners" hahaha.
That room looks like something straight out of a Kim Ki Duk film. His movies are always about the seedy side of Korea.
Where did you score the adjussi-farmer hat?
Don't know if you've read this yet, but Russia is getting scarier than ever under Putin. It won't be long before he'll match up with Stalin.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19761840/site/newsweek/
Is the public able to get "real" world news or do they censor the internet in Russia too?
We thought it was amusing that Fill Land is the inverse of Land Fill.
They were selling those adjussi farmer hats all over the place for $2 - I couldn't resist.
John - I hadn't read that article, although I've read plenty like it. Frankly, the dude isn't anything close to Stalin. And as far as I know, the Internet isn't censored over there; I had no trouble accessing news from back home while I was there last year.
It's just that a lot of Putin's...um...detractors and those trying to enlighten the world about the current goings on over there are dying gruesome deaths or being killed by his henchmen. And, his extortion using heating oil and natural gas against any country that supports NATO or the U.S. (Georgians are pretty sure he is a tyrant) are reminiscent of Stalin.
Just be careful. A friend of mine teaching over there says that as each day goes by he is getting treated much worse by many of the young, and more and more, nationalistic, men. He needs to stay out of the bars.
For your cat problem, try a long, thick branch or stick. Maybe, the cat will scramble up and over it. Or, some other type of ladder.
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