When I joined the BTS locations tour, one of our stops is a lunch in Yoojung Sikdang.

Yoojung Sikdang is popular amongst BTS fans as this restaurant used to be the go-to place for the boys during their rookie years. In fact, during our BTS tour, we just walked from the resto going to the old Big Hit building! I was imagining OT7 walking the very same streets before.

Sadly, Yoojung Sikdang was closed when I first visited with the tour group because of the Seollal holiday.



Babies! Pictures of the boys eating in Yoojung Sikdang:

After the holiday, I had out of city trips so I forgot about going back to the restaurant. I think it was on the night of my first day back in Seoul when I searched for Yoojung Sikdang's location on my Google Maps coz the street sounded familiar.

Yoojung Sikdang turned out to be walking distance from my guesthouse!

It's a bit of a walk, around 10-15 minutes, but doable:

Around my guesthouse are music schools and small agency buildings:


I just walked straight till I reach this street with Yoojung Sikdang's signage, which has the 2 black pigs and green strike background:


First visit, Yoojung Sikdang was closed but since I was with a tour group, I was able to get a decent solo picture, thanks to my new ARMY friends!




Went on my own during my second visit, just to check if it is really walkable from my place. It was still closed, I think it was the Monday after Seollal.

Third visit and I finally got lucky!

Btw, I always go a little before lunch, which is usually the time I go out of the guesthouse. Fortunately, I never had problems with long lines and cues!



Super happy that I was able to enter Yoojung Sikdang, finally! The restaurant is filled with all things BTS from floor to ceiling, I just love the vibe right away! I think fans from all-over the world contribute to the resto's interiors. There are two girls who approached Yoojung Sikdang's ajumma owner after eating to hand her a TATA plushie keychain. ❤

Here's a sneak peek of how Yoojung Sikdang looks like from the inside:




On the other side are more cup sleeves, fan arts, posters, dolls, stickers, and other official and unofficial BTS merch. Sayang I can't take a picture of the full wall because there were other diners, but I guess that's something to check out when you visit this place too! 😊







Now, let's eat! The best part is that they have a lot of vegetarian offerings on their menu!




What I Ordered:

Third Visit
Bibimbap with Wild Vegetables in a Hot Stone Pot. It comes with a lot of side dishes and a bowl of tofu soup so it is worth the price!






Fourth Visit
Tofu with Stir Fried Kimchi. Did not expect this huge serving size for its price, I wasn't able to finish everything! It's so good though, just like my first order. I wish I dined here daily during my long trip so I can try the other dishes, but this was already my flight day!

Yoojung Sikdang is not only a feast on the eyes, but the tummy as well!



The best part is, on both visits I got Taehyung cup sleeves from ajumma! You don't have to ask for it, she just goes around handing cup sleeves to her diners!

Ajumma can't speak English well, but she tried conversing with me on both times I was there, one was while I was checking out the wall of merch that she's trying to arrange. With my little Korean, I picked up the word chuahae / joahae which I learned from watching Kdramas to mean "to like" hahaha, so I just said "V!"

 She also showed me fan art stickers and I think she was asking if I can recognize the fan drawings, haha! Even though we were struggling to communicate, it's a cute and happy moment to converse about BTS in Yoojung Sikdang.

How to Go to Yoojung Sikdang:

Hakdong Station (Seoul Subway Line 7), Exit 7. Walk for 10-15 minutes

14 Dosan-daero 28-gil, Nonhyeon-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea

Open from Monday to Friday 8:30am - 9:30pm, Saturday-Sunday 8:30am - 7pm

Jumunjin was my next stop after 2 nights in Sokcho.

You'll rarely encounter Jumunjin in travel or Korea blogs. All I know is that Jumunjin is near Sokcho, a perfect stopover before heading back to Seoul especially for fan girls like me! You'll find two popular Hallyu shooting locations in this northeastern town of Gangneung City.

I have a friend who collects Funko Pops, and one who is really into dolls. We are all in our 30s age range now, but I encourage and enable my chingus whenever I find out they are into this and that.

Meanwhile, I'd like to say that I'm trying to "collect" South Korea cities.

I realized that traveling outside of Seoul makes me really excited and fulfilled. I look into my #Koreanagon Instagram hashtag with genuine happiness--like my friend looking at his shelf of Funko. So every time I go to Korea, I try my best to include a trip outside of Seoul in my itinerary.  What is your favorite South Korea city?

On my last few days in Korea, I decided to just explore different parts of Seoul per day. Something I've always wanted to do, yung hindi paguran na parang marathon. I wanted to take my time and try the food, the shops, and just aimlessly walk around the streets of just one area of Seoul to get to know it better. 

In one particular day when I can't think of anything to do, I decided to focus on Itaewon. I've been here I think one time palang before, and the only thing that I know about this place is that it has a lot of foreigners and it's a party district. I went there last time for the BT21 Line Cafe.

I usually open a small talk with “saan na next trip mo?”.

 Listening to someone's new or next adventure excites me coz I can really see authentic sparkle in a person’s eyes whenever they talk about their trip. 

Traveling has been my life for the past years. It’s the “highlight” of my blog year-enders, what I look forward to, and a big chunk of my motivation why I work so hard.

Sometimes I find myself curating "creative tours" that I may offer to fan girls like me whenever they travel to Japan or Korea. Nothing like the standard tourist locations line-up, I thought that it should be unique and interest-based like a Hallyu tour, a specific Korean drama tour, maybe a cute cafe and stationery hopping tour, etc. Then I saw that hindi na pala papahuli our travel booking sites.

While looking for more things to do to fill up my 20-day itinerary in Korea, I chanced upon a Seoul BTS Fan Day Tour. Since I have so much time for this trip, and would want days where I don't have to think too much and navigate, AND of course anything BTS we say YES... I booked this tour in a heartbeat!





BTS Tour Schedule:

8am - Meetup in Myeongdong Station Exit 2

9am - Iryeong Station - Shooting location for Spring Day

Dito palang feel ko sulit na the rate. It's not near Seoul (around an hour of travel time by private vehicle), and since it's an abandoned railway, it's also hard to take pictures here when you're alone.


I can hear the intro of Spring Day playing in my head while we were here.

10:20am - Hwarangdae Station and Gong-tral Park

When ordinary places turned into tourist spots because of Kim Namjoon. Namjooning in Hwarangdae Station and Gong-tral Park:

11:30am - Seoul Forest Park

Love Yourself shooting location, RM benches (donated by fans), and Jungkook's apartment.

1pm - Yoojung Sikdang

Restaurant where BTS constantly went to during their rookie years (near old Big Hit Building)





2pm - Big Hit Entertainment (Old Building)

Where it all started.

2:30pm - Laundry Pizza

Love Yourself: Her shooting location.





You have the option to stay here to eat! Worth it sya, the Potato Pizza is delicious!


Price and menu for your reference:

FAQs:

1) Tour operates every Wednesday and Sunday

2) Maximum number of participants is 43, it's also nice that they will push through even if you're alone!

3) We rode a mini-bus, but transpo depends on number of participants

4) Group is a fun mix of different nationalities, young and old, baby and long-time ARMYs!

5) Price of the tour is at Php 1700+ per head, food not inclusive, available via Klook.

If I Were To Offer This Tour:

Just for fun, here's my version of a BTS tour!

1) Shortest travel time from one place to another will take around 30 minutes, so I will maximize this with several BTS related activities like playing BTS songs while on the road, give BTS trivia to my guests like how the tour guides do it for other tours, play games ala Run! BTS, or maybe even play Spring Day before arriving to Iryeong Station since there's a TV naman in our van--just to hype my guests!

2) Make the tour really personal by asking my guests for their bias prior the trip, so I can handout photo cards or plastic IDs with a photo of their bias as souvenir.

3) It's nice that we had lunch in a BTS associated restaurant (Yoojung Sikdang or Laundry Pizza), but since tours usually end in souvenir shops... Why not drop by in either Myeongdong Underground or a Line Friends store?

4) Tour guides usually lift a stick with a flag or stuffed toy so the group will not get lost in a crowd. If I were to create my own BTS tour I will bring an ARMY Bomb as my tour guide flag!

5) My seatmate did her research of our tour and had photos saved in her phone so we can easily copy the poses of the boys per location that we're going to. But I think it would have been more interactive if as a tour guide I'll make sure to have an iPad or a big photo printout showing the places we're going to, and how they are related to the boys.

I can go on and on, haha! But I am limiting my lists to just 5 so you can share to me your wild ideas!
Will you also join this tour (or maybe my tour) if you're in Seoul? 😁