Today begins the first day of the annual Mud Festival in Boryeong, about 3 hours south of Seoul. I've known this was coming since Winter, and have been looking forward to it for a long time.
Fail #1: That does not, however, mean that I had planned anything in advance. So while my coworkers and friends bought their train tickets and booked hotel reservations for Boryeong beach weeks in advance, I unwittingly left my Mud Festival future to chance.
Fail #2: And so I should have seen it coming. The ultimate day of fail. When I checked the train tickets yesterday, there weren't any seats left on a train headed for Daechon (where Boryeong beach is located) at a reasonable hour. There was a train that left at 6:30 in the morning and J and I decided to just do it. We'd have to get up at 5, but the more time we got to spend there, the better, or so we figured.
Fail #3: So when we woke up at 9:00 this morning, we checked to see if there were any other tickets. There seemed to be a 10:24 train with seats still available. Unable to buy the tickets online, J and I headed to Suwon station. Unfortunately, we got to the train station at 10:26. So we proceeded to check for the next available train. There appeared to be a few seats left for a train to Daejon* at 12:48. OK, not a total waste, we said to ourselves, and we wandered around a nearby shopping mall for an hour.
Fail #4: "What about the return trip?" So we checked to see a return trip from Daejon to Suwon. No wait, it was Daechon to Suwon, wasn't it? "Let's check our tickets," said J. And lo and behold, we had bought tickets to Daejon, not Daechon. Two very different cities. There weren't any tickets available to Daechon. Could we go from Daejon to Daechon? Soldout.
Fail #5: "All right, let's just go home," we decided, and we headed for the metro back to Pyeongchon. We waited and waited, but no train came. And then we turned around and realized we were waiting on the wrong platform.
Win #1: When we got back to Pyeongchon, I took J to this adorable little Patisserie near my apartment called Mignon Patisserie (Cute Pastry shop), where we consoled ourselves with cheesecake, brownies, and chocolate mousse.
Win #2: Before leaving Suwon station we purchased train tickets to and from Daechon for tomorrow's Mud Festival activities.
*Did you catch the mistake?
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