World DJ Fest

Wow, my head is still buzzing after this weekend. Easily one of my top weekends in Korea. I bought my tickets to World DJ Fest within my first week of arriving to Gumi. I bought tickets with people I had literally just met, in the hopes we would still be friends :P Of course, these particular people are too friggin awesome and so by the time this epic weekend arrived, I feel we had established a pretty solid friendship. We had decided to all get animal onesies and embody our true spirit animal :D

And so, after many weeks of planning, we finally headed off to the festival early on Friday morning (got to love Buddha for having a birthday and giving us a public holiday). As you will soon see, this weekend had many "original"plans followed by the far more exciting "live in the moment" alternates.

Plan 1: Prebooked train tickets leaving Gumi at 9.30am.
I will admit, I was suuuuper surprised when everyone arrived at the station perfectly on time. We were then meeting Malcolm on the train (he had organised the tickets from Daegu). After hopping onto the train in a huge ball of frenzied excitement, Megan thought it would be funny to prank Malcolm by faking we missed the train (as it would pretty much be the norm). But, we decided not to be silly and go find him. However, when we looked for Malcolm, he was nowhere to be found. It was only as the train across the platform started leaving that we realised we were on the train to Busan...not Seoul. Oooops... And, with this being a long weekend, there was zero chance of getting a seat. Long story short, we ended up hiding out in the Noraebang room (because no train ride could be complete without karaoke).

After arriving in Seoul, we embarked on the epic subway ride to the festival- only about 27 stops!!!

Plan 2: Camping in our own tents. As a pretty experienced camper, this one seemed easy. Until we opened the tents and both of our teeny two man tents (aimed to house 6 people that night) had only ONE pole each. Some higher grade stuff for me. And, as it turned out, for everyone. It was one of those "nailed it" pintrest moments.
Tent #1: Orange and so narrow it was 2 dimensional. This became our closet (until it fell flat after about an hour).
Tent #2: Red, Broken, looked more like some sheets draped over tent poles. Could hold one person at most.
We preemptively made our beds outside.

Night one at DJ fest was AMAZING! No idea who was playing, but the music was awesome, the people amazing and the animal onesies a huge hit. I have vague memories of dancing around like a crazy lion, my lovely friends singing "In the Jungle" to me early in the morning and having a very comfortable sleep on the floor (there was astroturf, so it felt life a 4 star hotel)

Day 2 was more awesome jamming and awesomeness. Then we heard about the predicted rain starting at 6pm. Thanks to Cape Town weather, I didn't think much of this.
Well. Koreans are too efficient for that- 6.06pm the rain started. A blessing at first as it was refreshing and cooled us down. 3am, however, when we were drenched to the bone, freezing and had nowhere to sleep, this rain seemed less fun. I tried sleeping in the trance tent in the hopes of warming up. The bouncer was having none of it.

Thank goodness for Nokwanda who had rented a tent and let us all snuggle up in a giant Christmas bed. It was awesome! Luckily the rain died down after the 14 hour downpour. We then had the mission of packing up and heading off. The "tents" did not make it. They were donated to the festival grounds.

We then headed off to Itaewon (the foreigner district in Seoul with the BEST FOOD) for Brazilian Barbecue. Wait, scratch that, ALL YOU CAN EAT Brazilian Barbecue. They have SEVEN types of meat. And, not just any meat, really good meat! Some of it wrapped in bacon (so you know it's legit).  I think I ate my own weight in meat- it was glorious.

Plan 3: Catch the precooked train back to Gumi.

We all missed it. Even people that wondered from our herd and were deemed more responsible were late. And so, we waited for two hours at the station (convinced if we left the station, we would miss the next train).

Loooooong story short, we arrived back in Gumi just before midnight, exhausted, filthy but so happy.