The first festival I went to, was when I was in Korea for only three weeks. My Canadian co-worker Mike invited me. It is the Boryeong Mud Festival. Supposedly, the mud in this area is supposed to be good for your skin. Mike thinks it's just a gimmick to get tourists to go to this beach. There is a big mud "health" spa in Boryeong that sponsors it. It was great for my first trip because a lot of foreigners go to this festival. Since I was brand new to Korea, this was awesome to communicate easily. There were also a lot of Koreans, and it is a family event even though it seemed to be a booze fest for Koreans and foreigners. It was so much fun, and very filthy (just my style).
The beach is where I spent most of my time. There were tables set up with paint brushes and pails of mud. You could go over there, and paint yourself up, or have a female do it for you.
There was live music acts. Certain times during the show, they would spray the crowd with mud through hoses. The mud was pretty fine, and really not too gritty at all.
Then, they had awesome firework shows at night. The yellow and purple colors you see are lights that shown down on the beach throughout the night. They alternated these two colors covering a huge portion of the beach. Here's the website if you want to see more. http://www.mudfestival.or.kr/lang/en/index.jsp
If I stay here in Korea longer, I am definitely going back. This time I will have a camera.
The next festival I went to was in the Fall. It was part of the Hi Seoul Festival. The Hi Seoul Festival goes for a couple of weeks, 4 times a year, for each season. They have different types of events all over Seoul for this. The only part of the festival I went to was at this gorgeous park in Yeouinaru right next to the Han River.
This is another Canadian friend of mine, Elizabeth.
The first act was this orchestra. You may notice some cranes in this picture.
Then came the parade.
Dangling from these cool looking balloons are trapeze artists, that were flipping around.
Next was this band. They are not Korean, but they are something special.
They are strapped in harnesses that allowed them to flip upside down. They were elevated by guys with weights climbing up the rafters on the sides, and then sliding down.
The band had the normal bassist, guitarist, and drummer, but the also had a fiddle player. It looked so bad-ass, rocking the guitar while swinging around high in the air while flipping, or being upside down (even the fiddle player looked cool, and that's hard to do). The poor drummer didn't flip. Ahhh!
Then there was a crazy Korean play with the characters from the parade, and some actors. I wish I had more pictures, but this is still the time when I didn't have a camera.
This was the finale of this particular part of the Hi Seoul Festival (not of the festival itself). It was a play featuring "monster trucks". I am pretty sure that's lost in translation because there were definitely NO monster trucks. It was really construction cranes. This part of the Hi Seoul festival was sponsored by Volvo. You could hardly notice because the cranes were painted to fit the play except for the huge VOLVO written on them. You can see it on the last picture. Yeah, so a play featuring cranes and a huge puppet robot. So what? That's been done sooooo many times. Oh Korea, when will you be original??????
This picture shows the puppeteers.
Several actors are on the stage in this picture. The play was basically a futuristic, man vs. machine struggle. Now that, really has been done before. They had words in Korean and English on the sides of the stage explaining the plot of each act.
This is the main "human" character that wins over the ruthless machines "hearts". She does end up caressing the machines arm. It's the green one on the right.
Then she gets scooped up. In the end, the main robot has a heart. Isn't that sweet? Everyone took a bow, including the crane operators. The green arm got to be the final solo bow. Was he the lead actor?
OK! Now, my third, and most recent festival, the Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice Festival AKA the Hwacheon Trout Festival. The Sancheoneo fish is a trout. I went to this last weekend, and again, this Korean festival did not disappoint.
This is a cool little ice castle to walk through with neon lights in the ice.
Next we did some tube sledding.
A couple of our friends were hungry, and feeling adventurous. They actually tried this. It's a worm larvae. Street vendors all over Korea sell them. I would be adventurous too and try them, but the smell makes me want to vomit. They smell awful, and I think it's safe to say they taste that way too. I'll never know. Usually it's sold in a dixie cup, but the lady let the girls try a toothpick sample. Just so you know, they didn't end up buying a cup, but they didn't puke either.
Then we went off to ride 4 wheelers, quads, on ICE. This cost about 8 bucks, but was definitely worth it. It was awesome. A normal track on ice. Everyone was sliding out everywhere. It didn't take me long to figure out the trick. Go very slow for traction, and then slowly speed up. They also had go-carts on ice, but we opted for the bigger, faster ice sliding vehicles.
You can see from this picture, that there are tires as a bumper on the front of our quads. I took this as meaning they were bumper cars. I was nailing all of my friends. One of my friends had just spun out on a turn. I had just about reached full speed, then I hit the brakes and cut the wheel. I creamed him. I only got one warning. Some of my other friends, that weren't even trying to hit people got more warnings to slow down than me. Suckers!
Here's the Soju stage. These are Soju costumed guys on the stage. This was DEFINITELY a family event. There were kids everywhere. If you've read my other blog posts, you know a little about Soju. This stage area had music, these Soju guys dancing on stage, and a contest going on in front of the stage. The contest was a race with about five teams of two, usually a child and a parent. The kid would be put in this basket with a short rope. On go, the parent would run on the ice, dragging the kid, around a cone and then back. The parents really tried hard to win. It would end back at the stage, and there was some crashing with the parents and the kids with the stage. Nothing major, because the people in charge of the game were goal tending the stage. It was hilarious watching how hard the parents tried to win. And what do they win, you ask? The sweet, sweet, nectar of Korea, Soju. No wonder the dads were willing to fling their kids into the stage to win. They did tons of races, and even let two of us Waygooks (foreigners) participate in a race.
Next we made it over to this area. These were small rinks with goals on each end about a foot high. It was free. You just had to sign up. We played an awesome game of 3 on 3 ice hockey with no skates, no sticks, and no pads (we did have helmets). We kicked a puck around. As you can imagine, we all got a few bruises from this one, but it was worth it. It was so much fun. After our time was up, a couple of us had unknowingly signed up for a contest. You were supposed to kick the puck from half court into the goal. Since we were foreigners, they let my friend John here go twice, but previous Koreans weren't so lucky. On John's second shot, he made it (pictured above). This time, you don't win Soju. Don't be ridiculous! Obviously you win a live trout, put in a plastic grocery bag.
Here's John and his prize trout. There were booths set up that would cook your fish for you, but none of us foreigners are too big on eating fish with skin and bones, unlike Koreans. We had intended on going ice fishing too, but our time was getting too low. We had to start heading back for the bus. We did decide to go into the ice fishing area, though, and release this fish through an unused ice hole. He was probably caught again, but we gave him another chance to live. The ice fishing area had hundreds of Koreans fishing in this relatively small area. There was also an area where you could fish with your hands. It was a little too cold for that, thanks. I should be getting some more pictures of this soon, and I will add them later to this, or another post. Maybe in another festival post because, you know for sure, I'll be going to more.
To be continued.............
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