Saturday and Sunday

We started out on Saturday by catching a bus, then the metro at 5:30 in the morning. We headed out to Muan which is on the southwest coast of the country about 5 hours south, for the White Lotus Festival.

We made rice rolls with lotus leaves, called sambop, which was actually pretty gross.

Then we took a boat ride out on this large pond that was completely covered with lotus plants. 

We had dinner at the festival, which consisted of a normal Korean fare, but almost everything was wrapped or made with lotus leaves. I don't think they taste that good - pretty much like picking a leaf from any flower and eating it.  Then we left for the beach house, which was nice except for the lack of beds, but that's more than normal here.

There was a pool out back, and it was a steep climb down to the Doripo Beach

It was pretty misty, so it was hard to see far, but there was a little island, and more coastline around us. We had a campfire out on the beach, and pretty much just sat around the pool and beach and hung out and talked with the other 50 people on the trip until late. I had to teach James how to make a s'more. He'd never even heard of them before!!

The next morning we were supposed to be supplied breakfast - it was make it yourself pb&j. I watched a bunch of people play cricket and watched the tide go out - I've never seen a tide like that before. Some people tried to walk out to the island, but couldn't because the mud was so sticky and deep it was almost impossible to walk - with or without shoes.

We left around noon to go clam digging, which I turned out to be pretty good at. It was overcast, but still ridiculously hot outside. The poles that you see in the water are part of a seaweed farm. 

You pretty much take an odd shaped trowel and dig in the mud for clam shells that are still closed. 

I got about 30 or 40 before we stopped. We were supposed to catch octopus too, but apparently it was too hard to do. Someone else was able to catch quite a few by digging holes about a foot deep in the mud:

And about half an hour later - I ate a whole baby octopus, live.

I also had quite a few tentacles, which I thought tasted better. The video shows them cutting the tentacles and people taking them to eat - don't watch it if you're squeemish.

And this one I just held in my teeth - it was too big to eat. Too big to eat whole anyways. 

Afterwards we were supposed to go net fishing. It really ended up the fisherman pulled the nets out and pulled them in over the mud, and we picked the fish up out of the mud and put them in a box.

Rather disapointing after eating octopus, but it was a very interesting looking islet. They cut up the fish we caught in the boat and we ate it raw on the way back to the bus.

The rest of the people then got on the bus to go back to Seoul. James had been talking to one of the people that was running the tour, and managed to get us a ride into Mokpo with the photographers who had come with Adventure Korea. (They haven't posted pictures yet, otherwise I'd have better ones of me eating the octopus. They took quite a few of that.) We got there at the tail end of a festival. We didn't see it, but this may have been the vestiges from it, though it looked a bit permanent and expensive to be for a festival.

We found a place to stay in Mokpo, and then took a cab to the beach. We watched people setting off fireworks (they sell them on the streets here like any other vendor), and watched an impromptu wrestling match between a couple guys.

It's apparently an ancient form of wresting, but I don't remember the name of it. So James and I sat out by the beach for a few hours and talked and then went to sleep. 

And that was just the first two days. I'll try and post Monday's events tomorrow.

"I'm Not As Dirty As You Think"

This was the slogan on quite a few of the t-shirts that I saw at the Boryeong Mud Festival that I went to this past weekend. It's an annual festival that runs for two weekends each summer at Daecheon Beach, which is apparently a sleepy little town a few hours south of Seoul for the other 50 weeks out of the year. 

I went with Adventure Korea, which basically meant that I had paid ahead for a coach bus there and back from the Express Bus Terminal, and lodging for the night. This particular trip didn't have meals included. We had to be at the EB terminal at 8am, which is an hour metro ride and a 20 minute bus ride away from me, which meant being at the bus station at 6am. Oddly enough, when my alarm rang at 5am, I got up without hitting the snooze button once. Why is it that I can't do that on the weekdays? Anyway, we got there a few minutes early, hoping to find a coffee shop or something open at the bus terminal. Apparently nothing at that stop is open until 10am, even the coffee shop whose doors were open, lights were on, and the music was playing at 8:05. So I had to settle for some horrible kimbop (rice rolled in seaweed) from a street vendor, which I ended up giving to Cherita because it had some sort of pickled radish in the middle of it that was just gross. 

The bus ride was fine - there were three chartered buses coming from the EB terminal, so of course we left about half an hour late. I suppose that's to be expected when you have over a hundred 20-somethings all having to get up at dawn. They told us on the bus that we were to check into the hotel once we got there, and that at 1:30 we needed to be back at the hotel and hosed off so we could get back on the bus to do the extreme sports. Our group (James, Cherita and I) decided we'd rather stay where we were and meet up with our partner teachers, who were only able to come down for a  few hours the first day. And since our room, as well as most of the rooms on the second floor, were still occupied, we left our bags at the front with one of the 'tour guides' and headed off to get lunch.

We met up with our partner teachers, Ally, Gina, and Sylvia, and decided to eat at a seafood place right on the beach. We got what would be the equivalent of a shellfish platter. There are large tanks outside all the seafood places with every kind of different seafood, live, that you can think of. They lit a charcoal in the pit in the middle of the table, put a grill over it, and then proceeded to cover it in live mussels, conch, clams, shrimp, and a few other shell creatures that I couldn't name. When the shells popped open, they were done, and we ate them right out of the shells - with chopsticks of course. I would have taken pictures of this amazing meal, but my batteries had died on the bus, and I couldn't find the extras that I'd brought with me just in case. At one point, the shells started exploding, and little bits of hot shell were being propelled at our faces. I'm guessing this is why we were all given aprons. Every time we would clear off the grill, or start to get close, they would bring us even more. After a while, we had to tell them to stop because we were all getting full. 

After lunch, the Korean teachers went off on their own while we went to go put our bags into our hotel room. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted with a bare floor, a tv, and a tiny dresser with a pile of blankets and pillows on it. There were no beds. I'm pretty sure there's not a single hotel in America that could get away with having a hotel with no beds, but apparently this is a standard cheap hotel in Korea. Talk about paying for just the roof over your head. 

So then we headed out for the mud! The few pictures that I do have from the first day are from James' camera. He put it in a ziploc bag to keep it from getting mud on it, so the pictures are a bit fuzzy, but you still get the idea.

We got ourselves covered in the Mud Tub, and then James and Kate and I went for a few rounds of mud wrestling, which looked something like this, only with about twice as many people:

We pretty much spent the rest of the day bouncing between playing around in the mud, and washing off in the ocean, then getting muddy again. We had dinner at a golbi place since we weren't in the mood for anymore seafood, and spent the evening on the beach drinking, eating, people watching, and waiting for the fireworks. We were told the fireworks would be around 10pm, so we waited until 10:45 and decided to head back to the rooms since we were exhausted. And of course, they started right after we had left our perfect spot on the beach. By this point I had bought some batteries for my camera since the extras I brought that I found in my bag were, of course, dead as well. 

As soon as the fireworks were over, we headed off to bed. We had to be checked out of our room by 11, so we got up a little earlier than we would have liked - 8am. So we went to get brunch at Lotteria, the Korean version of McDonalds, and took a few pictures while we were out.

 

The Mud Prison, one of the easier ways to get covered

We went and got muddy on the beach for a few hours, did a few more bouts of mud wrestling, and then rinsed off so we could pack up our room and put our things on the bus. After making sure we had everything out, we headed out again for more muddiness.

Cherita and me. She didn't really want to get muddy the second day.

Kate and me. We met her outside the hotel and she hung around with us most of the weekend

Cherita, James and me. The three English teachers at EWAS

We had to be back on the bus by 3:50 (of course we didn't leave until almost 4:30), so we rinsed off outside and I changed in one of the public restrooms near the bus parking lot. It's the first time I've been in a squatting bathroom. No toilet, just a porcelin hole in the ground that flushes. It makes it a bit easier to change when there isn't a toilet taking up most of the stall, but I was mortified at the prospect that I might end up dropping my clean clothes on the floor. I really hope I don't have to use one of those again, but that's all they have in the subway stations. So we got on the bus and made it home just fine. I'm a bit sunburned, but mostly just sore from the wrestling and sleeping on the floor. I can't wait to go back next year. :)