Waygook Travels: Burning man

Burning man is an international festival that started in the US if I am not mistaken. Basically it’s a weekend of music and fun but with a twist. There is no money involved at this festival, you can take whatever you need with you and more and then you can swop out what you have for what you need. So for example lets say I am starving, I can find someone cooking some food and trade them a beer for a sandwich. There are also themed stalls where some very generous people have made, bought or designed games, performances or food related things for you to go around and sample.

Liz and I really wanted to paint our faces and cover ourselves in glitter so we bought a bunch of things from one of the stationary stores in Daegu and I painted all our faces before we went into burn and just took the paint with me in case anyone needed. It turned out that people liked our paint so within a few hours I was painting every persons face I could find and was given treats and drinks and other trinckets. At one point I even tried to re-create ‘a starry night’ on one girls back. That was by far the most fun of the days painting. It was a beautiful festival and everyone was so friendly and peaceful. The sunset was amazing and at night there was bioluminescent plankton in the water so when you ran your hands through the waves they would light up. Magical!

It didn’t start out too well though. There were organized buses leaving Daegu late Friday night so we hopped on one of those arriving on the west coast at about 3:30am. Now, not only is this really early in the morning but it was POURING with rain! And the festival was all camping so we were pretty much screwed. We happened to find a little shelter thing that we decided to wait under till it got light out. The rain was so heavy that it only started to get light at about 8am. By this time we were all exhausted and VERY sick of the rain! I think a few Koreans felt sorry for us as they offered us a pension (like a hostel but you sleep on the floor) to sleep in while the rain clears even though we were all pretty sure it wasn’t going to stop. So we dragged all our wet bags and belongings into the pension and passed out feeling a little bummed by the events of the day.

Well, what I didn’t expect was to wake up with brilliant sunshine in my face! The universe was on our side, it was a BEAUTIFUL day! We made some breakfast, painted and glittered up and made our way down to the festival on the beach.

By far one of the best weekends in

Korea