Soju is no joke.

No matter.  I managed to dance undeterred and unperturbed until five a.m. in gold platform sandals no less.  Yet it took my body three days to shake the slight nauseous feeling I’d contracted from two shots of soju.

How do people do it I wondered as I sat stuck in a state caught somewhere between revulsion and fascination as I watched the thin Korean woman across from me chug anything that wasn’t nailed down to our table.  Whiskey, soju, hof, sweet tea, pickled fruit juice…. it all went down.  Inevitably, she began to blow into the nearest ash tray, then all over our 200,000 krw (won) table.  I couldn’t help but smirk when I remembered the sign posted prominently outside the private club’s doors.  ”Korean Only.  No Foreigners.”  It read.  To be fair, this sign was posted because last year at during this very same festival, the club had admitted foreigners and the Westerners essentially trashed it.  Though I could understand the management’s reasoning – I couldn’t understand their lack of savvy.  Some things are better unsaid, especially when there’s no one around to translate.  Nonetheless, the point is:  We were the foreigners allowed in this night and were relieved as hell that the girl behaving badly was not one of us.  Our gracious host paid the table fee with the promise that we Westerners understood Korean culture.  That we’d respectfully waive our table lantern for service, tip the server at the beginning of the night, drink, eat, be merry and not track in any mud or sneak in the Korean equivalent of Two-Buck-Chuck.

Between sets of dancing to hyper Korean pop music that sounds and looks a lot like aerobics to me, were shows that displayed a deep contrast to what I witness during daylight hours.  During the day, most Koreans dress and behave about as loosely as a church woman with gloves, a bible and lips clenched tight enough to crack a nut between them.  But at night, in those private clubs that don’t even display an outdoor sign – dancing goes on til 6 a.m. and dance performances by buff and buck-ass-naked Korean men serve as intermission.  Funnier even is that no one blinks.  On this night – conversations were carried, drinks and appetizers delivered.  The floor filled and cleared depending on the dj’s current choice of music.  Move along folks.  Nothing to see here, the crowds non-chalance seemed to say.  A wow was all I could muster. The muddied, drunken, bikini-clad crowd I’d seen at the beach only a couple blocks away and a few minutes ago had nothing on this group.  And better yet, none of those people had any idea that this place even existed.  Two completely different worlds – high on a cocktail of booze and flesh – simultaneously partied til they dropped during this weekend called Mudfest in a little city named Boryeong.

Between the beautiful but barfing Korean inside the lavish club and the dirt covered, foul-mouthed Foreigners stumbling about outside:  Mudfest was essentially the Spring Break I never wanted.  I could’ve been in Fort Lauderdale… except for the mud’s reputed healing properties and all that damned-good Korean street food.  But before you think I spent my entire weekend in judgment, let me flip a bitch on ya.  I did manage to shake the chip off my shoulder,  take a swig of some god-awful sugar/caffeine concoction and get in on the action.   With very little cajoling from my comrades, I joined the booking club’s sexy dance contest in the hopes that if I was gonna be the most sober of my group, I might as well dance myself into a buzz.  Maybe I’d even win the 500,000 krw prize and pick up our tab.  Though my interpretation of a burlesque (a little shoulder skin, but no titty) show was popular enough to garner a decent round of voting applause – there was no way I’d win. Just before the contest was due to end, two “new” contestants materialized from nowhere.  One took off her shirt and the other dropped her panties.  While one undulated, quite professionally I might add, the other stood so close to the edge of the stage that her short dress could hide nothing from the crowd now looking directly up at her.

I was all tease.  She was all beaver.  Contest over.