Written from Kathy’s POV 🙂

We shared all of our logistics-related advice to help you plan a trip to South Korea in parts 1 and 2 of episode 28 of our podcast, but we also want to share how sometimes the least amount of planning can yield some pretty great results.

Could we have planned the things that happened on this day? Yes, for the most part, but the fact that they were unexpected surprises gave us so much excitement and serotonin in that moment, that we have absolutely zero regrets for how we went about it.

To Daegu or not to Daegu

The first detail to our lack of planning, is that we didn’t know whether we’d go to Daegu until it was time to go to Daegu. We planned our trip to include Busan, Jeju, and Seoul, and Daegu was a very big maybe depending on our mood and the progress of our trip. If we went to Daegu, we’d have 3 days in Busan instead of 4, and we were enjoying Busan quite a bit so Daegu was not a “need” – at least for Laura. I (Kathy) was the one who was pushing (very passively) for a Daegu day from the early days of planning the trip, because this city gave me a good amount of my bias line and I just had to go witness the vibe in person.

So how did we decide to pull the trigger? Laura’s only incentive to go to Daegu was that it would be our only chance to take the KTX (Korea’s fast-speed trains), as the rest of our transfers between cities were by plane. Was this enough?

Thankfully, yes. As much as I wanted to go to Daegu, we both paid a lot of money to come on this trip, and I wouldn’t impose such a big agenda item on anyone if they really didn’t want to. But Laura wanted to KTX, so that’s what pushed us over the edge to wake up on Sunday, November 6th 2022 and say: let’s go to Daegu.

Getting to Daegu

We looked ahead at possible train times and headed to Busan Station to catch our train to Daegu. Went up to the counter and in my best and most earnest Korean I asked for 2 train tickets on train 088, and off we went for KRW 34,000. Note: we discussed among ourselves whether to buy return tickets or just one-ways, and I said “let’s just get a one-way since we don’t want to be pressed for time or bored and I want to be free to choose when to come back.” Laura agreed and so we just got two one-ways. This was a rookie mistake, and we’ll share more on our panicked return ticket purchase in a bit.

Dying… to get to Daegu?

A minor sidenote on a major moment: Laura is highly allergic to certain things, with the main ones being shellfish, flowers, and cats. Her allergies are concerning enough that she brought along two EpiPens to South Korea and always carried one in her bag. As we perused the Busan Station for food to have breakfast before boarding the train, she saw some appetizing fish sticks at a store and bought them, along with a few other things.

As our train departed for Daegu, she started with the fish stick and as soon as she bit into it, her throat started acting up, so she instantly knew there was shellfish in the fish stick (not mentioned on the label back at the store). Thankfully her throat didn’t close up so this wasn’t an EpiPen moment, but she definitely needed some allergy meds… which she did not bring with her in her bag that day. Once we got to Daegu, we looked for pharmacies outside the train station, but since it was Sunday, they were all closed. She said she was ok and just powered through it all day, but we wanted to include this info for anyone who is highly allergic to take note of the lack of labeling and possible lack of available pharmacies for your own planning.

“So, what do we do next?”

Since Daegu was not a ‘for sure’ stop, we didn’t have an agenda when we set out to go to the city that birthed Kim Kibum, Min Yoongi, Choi Seungcheol, Kim Taehyung, Choi Hyunsuk, Choi Beomgyu, and everyone else I adore. We had done some mild research and knew Daegu had a lot of nature and parks (not really exciting for Laura with her allergy to plants), but we didn’t have one specific driving force.

As a Min Yoongi ult bias who considers him the oxygen I need to live, I wanted a Min Yoongi landmark tour, but again, if Laura had willingly come to Daegu, I didn’t want to make it all about me and Yoongi. So we decided that our first stop would be one of Daegu’s premiere attractions, Apsan Park.

While we were sitting at the bus stop waiting for the bus to Apsan park, I jokingly said to Laura: “if you see bus 724, pinch me super hard because that’s the bus Yoongi used to ride so I need to make eye-contact with it.” The bus arrived and off we were to Apsan mountain!

Sidenote: while on this bus, Yoongi dropped one of his famous random photoshoots on Instagram, and he hadn’t been active in a couple of weeks so OF COURSE this meant that he was saying hi to me because he could feel my presence in his city. Obviously.

Therapy is expensive but delusion is ✨FREE✨

Apsan Park

We arrived at Apsan Park and did a short little hike up to the cablecar station. In that hike, we passed by a war memorial located inside the park called Nakdon River Victory Memorial Hall/Museum. We decided to walk around the outside of the memorial, which has lots of war memorabilia that honors the Korean War.

During our perusing of the area, we couldn’t help but notice that among the flags raised at the memorial, Colombia’s was included. Since we’re both Colombian, we were shook (in the best possible way) to see our flag represented. We looked into it later and found out that Colombia was the only Latin American country to send troops to help South Korea during the Korean war, and this began a lasting relationship between the countries. This knowledge inspired us to make a video about the links between Colombia and South Korea, which we published in English and in Spanish.

We finally arrived at the cablecar station to buy our tickets (KRW 12,000 per person round trip), and boarded the next car up. There are only 2 cablecars (one going up, one going down), and the ride takes about 6 minutes. Laura got us a good spot by the window, so here’s our ride up for your enjoyment.

Once we got to the top, the hike to the observatory was closed (we knew this in advance thanks to Google), but there’s still a restaurant with a deck that we thoroughly enjoyed while up there. We had ice cream while overlooking the city, the weather was perfect, and it was a wonderful calming moment after the hectic morning and allergy scare we had. We started looking at possible restaurants to go to, and Laura found “tripe alley” which is a street where they have back to back restaurants that serve one of Daegu’s specialties. I’m not much for tripe, but since she came to Daegu for me, I was happy to let her choose an adventurous meal.

Once we had our fill of the view and ice cream, we headed back down by cablecar. After walking out of the park we had decided to go towards the March 1st Independence Movement area, so off we went!

The Train to Busan

No, we’re not leaving Daegu yet, but this is when we encountered our aforementioned return ticket issue. Bear with us.

We got on the bus back out to the city without really knowing exactly where we were going. For some reason, it was really hard to find an exact address for the Mach Independence Movement Steps, but you should look up Daegu Jeil Church and you’ll end up at the steps as you walk around it. We set our destination as Seomun Market so we could figure out the walk from there.

During our bus ride, Laura decided to look at return tickets to Busan to get an idea of possible times, and to our surprise, there were none. That’s right. The return tickets were basically all sold out and in that moment, it seemed like we actually wouldn’t make it back to Busan. We found a few tickets really close to midnight, but that was very late for us and not what we wanted. After about 20 minutes frantically searching and refreshing the page, two tickets popped up at 9pm, for about USD $34 each. We didn’t even flinch at the price and just got them in hope we’d be able to return to our hotel at a decent time and not be too exhausted. Note to self (and all of you): please secure return tickets before going somewhere, unless you’re adventurous and can afford a few unexpected expenses!

Stepping towards March 1st Movement Steps

We made it to Seomun Market, walked to Daegu Jeil Church, walked down the March 1st Independence Movement Steps, and posed in front of Gyesan Cathedral before asking our famous “where to next?” question. Here’s where the day takes ALL the unexpected turns and pays off unbelievably.

A series of seriously fortunate events

We were thinking of going to another landmark park, but it was almost 5pm and we hadn’t had a solid meal all day, so we decided to eat instead. Laura gave up on tripe alley but found short rib alley instead, which was still very enticing to her.

We make our way to the bus stop that will take us to short rib alley and I see a gigantic SUGA banner that stops me in my tracks and I start taking all the pictures with it. Laura realizes we’ve actually landed at BAS Entertainment Academy, which is where Yoongi honed his producing skills. My heart is so full because I wanted to go to Yoongi’s elementary school (which he visited earlier in 2022), but it was so out of the way that it didn’t make sense to drag Laura there. So the fact that we ended up at BAS completely checked off that box for me.

As we wait for bus 156, Laura is on her phone figuring out the map and best routes, and I’m still staring at the BAS building and the Yoongi banner in disbelief that our unplanned steps got us here. Laura hears a bus incoming and since she’s trying to figure something out, she asks me to look at which bus it is, and if you’ve been reading carefully from the beginning and caught my foreshadowing earlier, you might just know which bus it was.

It wasn’t bus 156.

It was bus 724.

Of course. This is where Yoongi produced music, so this was the bus he took to get here. Obviously it was one of the buses that stopped here. We could’ve planned this, we could’ve thought this through, but the fact that we didn’t and it just happened that way is what will make this day one of the best of my life.

I was in shock while Laura started trying to take pictures and then proceeded to scream at me to get on the bus, telling me we’d figure a different route later. I’m scrambling to find my face mask (we went during November 2022 so it was currently still mandatory to wear them on public transport) and my T-money card to pay my fare, literally unable to think or move from the shock of the moment.

Somehow we make it on the bus and find seats. I’m staring out the window thinking of Yoongi’s hard times – when he had to decide whether to use the little money he had for food or for a bus fare to go to the studio and produce beats he could try to sell to help his family – and my eyes just start welling up. I wondered if he had ever been on this exact bus or if they had changed them since then (it had been over 12 years since he moved to Seoul).

While I’m in full mental breakdown mode, Laura realized bus 724 was actually a suitable option to end up at short rib alley so it wasn’t a detour to get on it after all, which made me feel better. We arrive at our bus stop, we get off and I stand there staring at the numbers 7 2 4 like an idiot, taking more pictures and just trying to soak up the moment.

We start walking towards short rib alley, and Laura recommends we switch streets to one with more people and lighting as it was getting late and dark. And so we have one more plot twist for the day.

Need a sleeve for your cup?

If you know anything about K-Pop, you know about cupsleeve events. They originated in Korea as a way for fans to gather and celebrate their favorite groups on their anniversaries or comebacks, or a specific member’s birthday or solo project. Cupsleeves made their way to the U.S. and although at first I didn’t understand the appeal, I started going to them in March of 2022 and never looked back.

I had definitely thought it would be cool to go to a cupsleeve event while in South Korea, but immediately dismissed the thought because it would probably consume too much time and it just didn’t feel like a wise way to spend our limited hours while in Korea. I gave up on the idea, but the city of Daegu had other plans for us.

So as we’re switching to the better lit street, we walk down a block or two and come across a banner of idols, which I stared at but with my brain still being chemically altered from the 724 bus experience, I couldn’t discern what it was there for. Then, Laura goes: “is this a cupsleeve?”

No way.

No freaking way.

It was. The banner was of The Boyz members Q and Sangyeon who had birthdays around that time. We stared inside the shop trying to figure out the vibe and then two girls who were sitting close to the door saw us and started smiling and waving at us to come in. What? Us? OMG! Do we do it?

We did it.

We walked into the cupsleeve and said hi to the friendly fans. They started trying to speak some English to us, and we answered back as best we could with both Korean and English trying to share details of the groups and members we liked. After saying hi to them we walked up to the cashier to order some drinks and cupsleeves, and were surprised by the way this cafe (called Blue Maze) ran their cupsleeve in contrast to how we see it done in South Florida. We made a short recap video about this experience too, which you can watch here.

In short, we bought our drinks, said bye to our friends and walked out with even bigger smiles than when walking in because of the sheer disbelief of having run into a cupsleeve accidentally, and in Daegu. It would’ve been much less surprising in Seoul, but the fact that it happened in Daegu and only because we decided to switch streets from what the map was recommending… wild. The girls we met actually ran out after us to give us more stickers, ask if we could follow each other on Instagram, and take pictures. It was the absolute cutest moment of all time.

Delicious dinner and sultry Kwangseok

The rest of the evening went just swimmingly well.

After all that we experienced, I could’ve been served actual trash at the restaurant and I still would’ve been the happiest person alive. But the food ended up being amazing – Laura says it was her favorite meal out of the entire trip – and from there we still had time before our train, so we headed to Kim Kwangseok street. Kim Kwangseok was a very well-known artist in all of South Korea, and he spent his last years in Daegu, so the city holds a special place for him. Yoongi being from Daegu is very familiar with his music, and has sung one of his songs a few times on his livestreams.

After walking the street and leaving our mark with the vendors that sell locks, we stumbled upon a bar so we had a couple of beers (took a few more to go) and then finally headed back towards Dondaegu Station to catch our #TrainToBusan.

As I sit here months later typing this, I’m still in disbelief of all of the amazing moments we got to experience that day. Our day in Daegu almost didn’t happen, and yet it’s basically our favorite day of our entire two weeks in South Korea. And we didn’t plan a second of it.

Hope you enjoyed this endless retelling, and if you have any questions whatsoever about our trip or want advice from us for yours, don’t hesitate to reach out.

P.S. – here’s our TikTok recap video that briefly summarizes the day so you can go on this rollercoaster with us one more time!