Everland & Boryeong Mud Festival (보령머드축제)

Finally midterms have ended, so I could enjoy the weekend free of stress. :)

After exams on Thursday, we went to eat Malaysian Indian food. My first non-Korean meal in Korea! Half the menu was vegetarian, so I was beyond excited. Also, this is the first place I went where I got a big glass for water and they filled the cups for us. In Korea, most restaurants give you small metal cups and the water is self-serve, which means you're going to be making a lot of trips to the water cooler when the food is spicy!

I hope I can try some other non-Korean foods here too. It's so refreshing to eat a variety.

The next morning we went to Everland, a theme park I visited the first time I came to Korea. There's a zoo there, which is so much fun to go through!

The next day we woke up early again and travelled three hours to get to the Boryeong Mud Festival (보령머드축제). We didn't plan ahead and just bought KTX tickets that day, so we had "standing only" tickets, which meant we and several others sat on the floor of the train next to the bathrooms. 

But finally, we arrived. For being the 16th mud festival, it didn't seem to be structured that well. The paid area is so small. There were a few blow up slides, mazes, and some muddy pools, but the wait time was like an hour to use any of them. We only had three hours until the train ride back, so we just did the maze:

After the maze, suddenly there was mud everywhere! They must have refilled all the buckets. Somehow we ended up in a slippery pool of mud when someone pushed one person causing 20 others to fall, including us. I don't know how I managed to not get much mud on my face!

The part I was least looking forward to was getting all the mud off of me before taking the train back. We paid 2000won to take a cold shower with probably 40 other girls crammed into a tiny area. It was my first time in a communal shower and there was mud everywhere. I had to throw away my shirt, but it was old and faded anyway.

It was an interesting experience, but I wouldn't go back again. The event promotes the use of mud in skin and hair products, and it is definitely targeted towards foreigners. While there I got to make mud soap though!

Until later... :)