[warning: long post, lapslock, and lots of cursing, slang, and fangirling]

holy , fam. ok, i don't think anyone actually reads these, but i need to fangirl/vent/chronicle about it before it becomes any hazier.

so as the title implies, i recently went to my first!! ever!! kpop!! concert!! *lots of internal screaming* it was bts and their wings tour in manila, philippines on may 6^th. i know i'm pretty late, but it was finals week, so got hella hectic before the end of the semester ( was worth it, tho, idk how but i got A’s in all my classes!!)

if anyone is reading, you guys can try to read the entire thing, but i’m also dividing this into sections in case you only need to know about something in particular/skip to the good fam. i'm gonna be as detailed as possible so i can look back at this and giggle to myself about how my first kpop concert went.

leggo~

mini kpop background

so i'm a multifandom kind of fangirl. and as much as exo was my first hardcore kpop love, there's no denying that life would be so boring if i only listened to exo. there's a bunch of other groups i'm into, but i don't get into every single group (sometimes i only like a few songs and not know/get into the members, or the other way around). anyways the two boy groups that i am deeply into rn are exo and bts.

exo's exo'rdium concert had already passed in philippines (which I’m gonna call pi from now on) back in february, but the wings tour was just newly announced. so when the places for the wings tour were released, my best friend and fellow kpop fangirl khrystal was dead set on going to concert. since we've been into kpop, we've always had a dream of actually going to a real concert. if you live anywhere outside of south korea/asia, you know how difficult and expensive it is to wait for a concert to come around and to actually go to one. the closest a concert usually happens in guam (where i live) is during guam live (kind of like a mini coachella with lots of local + overseas bands; sometimes a kpop band/artist performs there, like nu'est, brown eyed girls, and jay park) and in the philippines. so most of the time, you're not only worried about snagging a concert ticket and that cost, but also airfare, place to stay, and spending money ofc. overall, its expensive to be an international kpop fangirl.

plane tickets/flight plan

as i’ve already mentioned, i'm from guam. it’s about four hours away and two hours ahead of pi. the good thing about pi is that it's literally not that far from where i live and you get pretty good airfare prices depending on which airline you take. for any references, i spent USD$300 for my roundtrip ticket, which was for only a four-night, three-day stay. the cheapest i've ever spent on a roundtrip ticket to pi was USD$200 during airfare promotions.

khrys’s flight was on the same day as the concert, but landing time was around 2pm (around 5 hours before the concert started). just so it would be easier for us and our parents, we went on the same airline, and took the same flight route. khrys’s brother tim (the one that managed to buy her a concert ticket) was also going to pi and we all just ironically ended up going on the same departure date. tim was going to pi for vacation (so he was staying there longer than me and khrys) and promised our parents he’d look after us during our short visit. he didn’t go to the concert with us, but he ended up taking us around manila; he even handled the airbnb we were staying at.

concert tickets

back to the good , khrys was hella down to go to the bts pi concert, so as the great friend and enabler that i am, i ended up researching everything about the concert and pi organizers – venue procedures, ticket prices, seat layouts, how to buy tickets online, basically everything fam. pi armys/sponsors/organizers were also hella helpful and informative (shout out to @happeesy and @sugaph on twitter and the manila wings tour facebook pages for all the updates and info), so a lot of the stuff was easy to follow and i got a lot of feedback and support from them. i initially didn't plan on going because i really did not have the budget/finances at the moment, but i did want to make sure khrystal was fully prepared for this concert.

so when the day of ticket buying came (online for us ofc), khrys was devastated because she had work during the time tickets were to go on sale (12pm guam time, 10am in pi). i offered to buy a ticket for her and, as a backup, so did her brother. it was a goddamn war. pi is notorious for having slow af wifi/internet and it didn't help that tickets could be bought in person and online, so the server and ticket buying website kept crashing. pictures were even posted online that the lines for ticket buying in person started 8pm the night before. i literally did not get a good connection until two hours after tickets were released.

and even after all that effort, i still wasn’t able to buy a ticket for khrys. i was so damn sad and disappointed that i couldn’t do it, BUT khrys’s brother ended up buying a ticket for her. she called me up during her break and we talked over the details. it was day 1 (may 6^th), which was actually the saturday that her flight landed on (silly her for forgetting to tell her brother that she wanted a day 2 ticket, but hey what can you do).

when i got home, i checked the available seats again, just to see where khrys was seated, and low and be-mothering-hold the seat right next to her was still available. i called her up and tried to convince myself to do it/not do it, but i had the money in my bank account and it was JUST GODDAMN TEMPTING ME SO I BOUGHT IT OMG. i remember quadruple checking to make sure the seat was in the same day, same row, and same section as my bestfriend. i had never felt happier putting in my credit card info honestly.

we bought the most expensive seats (they were called VIP A) and they were the sections closest to the stage that weren’t standing. they cost PHP13,225 (regular price is PHP13,125, plus an online fee of PHP100), which was about USD$270. really not bad considering my friend went to the anaheim concert and her ticket (same general area as me and khrys’s) cost about USD$400 (i’m not sure if that was the original price or a reselling price, though).

smtickets was the one handling the wings tour tickets and since we bought ours online, we only received a confirmation of our order and a voucher to redeem the tickets. you had to go to an actual smticket booth in pi with your voucher, credit card used to make the purchase, and valid id to actually redeem the printed tickets.

i also joined/followed a bunch of accounts that were hosting/organizing ticket trading for the pi concert. as much of a relief it was to get tickets, it would have been more convenient and less exhausting for me and khrys if we went to the day 2 concert (may 7), just so we could actually rest right after our flight landed. despite all my hunting, we couldn’t find someone to switch with, so we just ended up sticking with our tickets.

flight/trip prep

so i’m hella neurotic when it comes to being prepared. my life motto is “prepare for the worse and hope for the best.” ironically, i always end up packing too much or too little for flights and i don’t actually go off-island very much (my last overseas trip was to s. korea in 2015). obviously, i wanted this trip to be perfect and to pack just what i needed since it was only three days. khrys and i were going american-style and just packing a carry-on luggage (no checked-in luggage). i prepared a list of everything i needed about a week or two before the flight and packed everything two nights before.

every day leading up to the flight departure date had me on edge, but i was trying so hard not to give into the hype cause the concert was like two weeks before my finals week and i had to prep for my exams too. khrys was not helping cause she kept sending me fancams and pics from the other concerts and generally not even trying to calm herself down.

d-day

woo , it was our flight and concert day. i got to the airport with my parents pretty early (around 3 hours before my flight at 12pm) since they knew the check-in line was gonna be pretty long. khrys and her brother, in true best friend dramatic fashion, arrived a bit late, but we made it through just in time. the flight was around 4 hours and we landed in pi at 2pm, pi time. i thank all the deities i could think of when we landed, cause i knew it was gonna be hot, but i didn’t think it was gonna be that hot. i mean, i live in a tropical island and fam i was sweating bullets at the airport already, even in my crop top. idk how khrys survived with her all-black out fit and her her brother survived with a hoodie, man.

the airbnb we were staying at was about 10-15 mins from the airport by taxi and we checked in and relaxed a bit before heading to mall of asia (moa) to redeem our tickets (also about 10-15 mins from our airbnb). we ate a late lunch (JOLIBEE!!!!!!!), walked around moa a bit before going back to the airbnb to relax and get ready for the concert. now khrys and I weren’t gonna be crazy and wear clubbing clothes and put on tons of makeup, but pi was hella hotter than we expected and we needed to freshen up and change clothes lol.

pre-concert jitters

so khrys’s brother tim dropped us off at moa arena and khrys and i went to the outside official merchandise booth first cause khrys wanted to buy an army bomb. boy was i getting hella pumped. we were at least 40 minutes early, but we could already hear all the fans that were inside the arena screaming and going wild. khrys was visibly getting anxious, nervous, and excited, so much so that she had to pull me to the merchandising counter to translate what the guy was saying cause she couldn’t grasp any of it (she can’t speak tagalog, but she can usually understand it pretty well).

we ran to the entrance and lined up with the rest of the fans to enter. it was pretty cool seeing that it wasn’t just filipino armys that were there; i could hear a bunch of chinese, english, and vietnamese speaking fans while waiting for the (pretty short) line. once in, khrys was getting hella shook. the both of us have never been to moa arena so even if we knew where our seats were, we didn’t know which entrance to take. luckily, there was an abundance of staff around and i was in no mood to be all shy and awkward with asking now that i was about to see my boys perform live and in person in about 30 minutes. khrys and i ran to the first body guard we saw and asked where our section entrance was and he told us it was upstairs. khrys was so damn restless by then, she didn’t even comprehend what the guy said and was about to run into the wrong section entrance (i’m laughing my off remembering and writing this part). we went up the escalator and khrys practically ran to find our section entrance (khrys almost ran past it too hahahaha).

holy , guys. i don’t know if it’s just me, but holy just walking into that arena gave me goosebumps already. i was in this state of shock and awe looking around that arena, i barely even remember walking down the aisle to our row (B) and seats (5 & 6). it was just so surreal for me, seeing this packed af stadium filled with all these armys with their lightsticks, banners, and gear. i literally could not believe that it was really happening, i was actually gonna see bts live and in the flesh and not just behind another fancam video.

[okay heading to our seats was pretty funny ‘cause i’d been joking with khrys during the weeks before the concert that i was down to mollywop a if they stole my seat (partly-joking, i am always ready to throw some hands tho fam). guess who’s seat was already taken when we go there? khrys’s. hahahahaha, she was bouta throw down dude, she even told the girl that was occupying her seat with the most saccharine smile and in the most polite teleservice voice she could muster that “um, you’re in my seat.” for a second i thought we really were in the wrong section cause the other girl said she was also in B-5, but turns out she was the one in the wrong section and moved to her section.]

i looked at my watch and i noticed we still had over 20 minutes before the concert officially started, but everyone and their mother was already hyped the up cause they were playing bts mvs on the big screens. all the fans would scream when a new mv came on and they would start fanchants to them. khrys and i just kept looking around and grinning at each other, ear-to-ear. all i felt in that moment was a ton of excitement and a lot of pride for my boys. like all these people came to see bts, sold out this goddamn arena both concert days for these boys, i really couldn’t help but feel really proud of all that bts had accomplished since i first got into them during their debut era. i was hella sentimental and the concert hadn’t even started yet hahaha.

the real thing fam

(set list is in order)

7:30pm hit and straight on the mothering dot, the stadium lights dimmed and the opening vcr started playing. khrys and i were hella pumped already, but the cool thing was that our seats were so close that we could see when there was stuff happening behind the bigass curtain covering the main stage. the vcr wasn’t long, but khrys would scream every time she saw people behind the curtain move around before i had to tell her that that was just staff. and then it wasn’t staff anymore and we could see bts’s seven silhouettes standing on multi-level platforms behind the curtain and we got hella hyped. the vcr finally ended and everyone was holding their breath during the dead seconds before the opening notes to not today came on, the bigass curtain was pulled, and we saw bts. all hell broke loose.

yo it was not mothering fair fam. the first stages were too ing lit, how was my concert- supposed to take it all in?? after not today, bts hit it back-to-back with am i wrong, 뱁새 (silver spoon/crow-tit/try-hard), and dope before doing their opening/introduction ment. tbh, it’s hard for me to remember what exactly happened because these hype- songs went by pretty fast, so thank god i ended up snapping an recording some of these stages (i also had the set list saved in my phone lol). their introductions were really cute and mostly in english and tagalog. their tagalog was pretty good and i thought they took some time to memorize a great deal of it, but khrys pointed out to me later in the concert that there were actually teleprompters that helped them out too. it was pretty short and sweet, bts just went through each member, saying hi to manila/philippines/fans, not unlike what you’d watch on the seoul/japan concert dvds, except they didn’t go on whole tirades cause of their limitations with the english and tagalog. of course, rapmon was the most confident in his english, so he spoke the most out of all the members.

after their opening ment, the stage went dark and another vcr played and then it was jungkook’s solo begin on the main stage. lemme tell you, khrys was hella fangirling now cause jungkook’s her bias. during the whole concert tho, you can hear her screaming throughout all her fancams, it was ing hilarious to me. after jungkook, it was jimin’s solo stage with lie. goddamn that boy should be illegal, omg the part where they lift him jesus christ fam. props to the backup dancers, too, those guys were lit. suga’s solo first love was after lie, and the feels fam. no backup dancers, but they had instrumentalists on stage with him. i remember reading a tweet by @kinqtan on twitter saying how in the bts rapline, rapmon is the power, hobi’s the flow, and suga’s the emotion and bOI WAS THAT TRUE. i mothering felt that x10, min yoongi. demon man had my heart in a chokehold during his stage, fam went in.

[deep breath, , ok breathing again]

then it was vocal line’s stage with lost. all the previous stages were on the main stage, but lost, save me and i need u were on the extended stage and boy were khrys and i freaking out. they were so close dude. like senpai notice me close. it was pretty fun watching them interact with the standing fans that were swarming the stage, as well as wave hi to all the sitting fans. from our seats, i couldn’t get the best view of them on the main stage, but them on the extended stage was like watching in 1080p dude.

back to the main stage, it was rapmon with his solo reflection. man, the whole stadium was hella cool at that point, cause pi armys planned to continue that “we love you” fanchant during his solo and it went through so well. rapmon’s stage transitioned seamlessly to taehyung’s solo stigma and i was gone. i think i recorded taehyung’s stage the most cause he’s my bias and boy hit that note like no other, you go boo. i was screaming and cursing so much during his stage hahaha

hobi’s solo mama was next and it was the cutest ing thing fam. it started on the extended stage and had a vcr of a ton or predebut pics of him playing on the big screens, from him as a baby to debut era hobi. i feel like hobi’s the type to really really feed off the energy of the crowd, and everyone was really hyping him up and just being hella supportive. he let us sing a lot of the chorus and you could just see the energy flowing through him when he heard the crowd singing back to him. was lit and i could feel the happiness flowing down to my toes lol. jin’s solo awake frick fracking almost had me in tears man. the whole crowd was singing along to the whole song fam, kind of like we were trying to tell him that we’re here, we love you, we think you’re more than enough. ooooooh boy, when he went in on that note, the whole stadium ing cheered man.

then hold my weave, cypher pt 4 came on. i don’t wanna be that girl, but i am totally gonna be that girl and tell you right the now, cypher was the littest mothering stage that whole night like fAAAMM. the goddamn beat comes in and you see rapline walking onto the extended stage, rapmon telling us to “stand up!” like , i do not disrespect my elders, i am standing the up sir. [then the goddamn security guard was like “miss, sit down” and i was like “ did you not hear him????” he let it go once everyone else in my section stood up]. rapline came to get my wig fam, they snaTCHED IT RIGHT THERE AND THEN FAM. you guys have probably already seen the fancams, so you can only mothering imagine my ho jamming to it already. namjoon was illegal. hoseok was illegal. min mothering yoongi was goddamn illegal in this stage. THIS STAGE WAS A BUNCH OF MURDERERS FAM. anyways they blessed us with their holy water and the decibel level in the room soared to deafening levels. the beginning beats of cypher pt 4 were literally the last thing i ended up recording because it got too lit after that fam, i didn’t want to end up dropping my phone while i was jamming hahahaha.

just when i thought i put my weave back on, the whole line of bts mothering appeared on the extended stage and started fire. rude AF fam, lemme tell you. the whole shibbang after that just kicked my balls dude. it was a medley of n.o., no more dream, boy in luv, danger, and run and it was a goddamn hellfire up in there. the members were allowed to go to the y extensions and basically go anywhere. my heart could not take this medley fam, damn near died right then and there. lots of fan service basically during this point, especially from jin. i think it was at this point were jin would grab stuff from the standing fans and take em around the stage. and even though they weren’t supposed to (venue rules), a bunch of fans also threw a lot of stuffed animals, banners, posters, and such on stage, so the members played with a few of them.

bts went back to the main stage for war of hormones and 21^st century girl. i’m pretty sure they had a middle talking segment before this, but i honest to god cannot remember when exactly it was. Their final ment was right after these two stages, though. they said the usual : thanks, love pi armys, hope we see each other again, the next stages will be the last ones, you know the works. again, most of this was in english and tagalog, so that was cute. the rest of the members went backstage while hobi stayed on the main stage to perform intro: boy meets evil. khrys’s a dancer, so she has mad respect for all the choreo bts does, but she hella loves this stage cause hobi goes hard.

the rest of the members come back in for the “final” stage: blood, sweat, and tears. the cool thing was that pi armys planned a cool fanchant for us day 1 goers: during the “wonhae mani mani” fan chant part, we said “wonhae mani mani-la” instead, kind of like a big welcome to pi kind of thing. it was hella cool hearing everyone in the stadium chant it. then bts went backstage to change, while the stadium remained dark, looking like the concert was over.

outro: wings came on and that started their encore stage. the bts members came out and basically went everywhere again. the pi army fan project was holding up a blue banner that read “넌 내 하나뿐인 태양 세상에 딱 하나” (rapmon’s first lines from run, which mean “you are my one and only sun, the only one in the world”). it was supposed to be “the sky that their wings would soar through,” very cheesy but hella beautiful to be a part of. jin, being the fan service god he is, asked for one of the banners from one of the standing fans and ran around the stage with it for a while before he returned it. when the song was over, the members had a lil talk, and they thanked us for the cool banners, even singing the line haha.

2! 3! (둘! 셋! (그래도 좋은 날이 더 많기를)) came on and my heart. if you’ve guys watched fancams from the wings tour, then you know this is the song where armys sing the outro part until after the music ends. omg my heart hurts writing this and reliving that beautiful scene, just watching bts go around the stages and thank armys with that freaking look on their faces. holy , hearing armys sing the chorus to 2! 3! made my heart burst and seeing bts hold up their mics just to hear us [lots of crying rn, brb]. if you thought the fancams made your heart soft, you had to have been there to feel your heart freaking burst into a puddle of goo man.

BUT SPRING DAY, holy . this was legit the last song on their encore stage and i was close to tears man. this song didn’t even make me cry like a baby before, but seriously, every time i hear it now, I just remember it as the last song i saw them perform live and it gets to me. the fan project for this song was really pretty: the stadium was divided into green and pink sections, to represent a spring day. you know in the mv version of the song where the background vocalists go “oh woah oh” for a while? that’s what fans were doing the whole time the instrumental of spring day was playing while bts finished and did their final bows. they got to run around stage for a while and wave and just say goodbye to the fans and you know break my heart. there was this funny moment when jimin found a picture of him predebut and he held it up laughing until he saw the other side had his middle school graduation picture then he dropped it with a sour face hahaha.

then it was over. the song finished, bts went backstage, the lights went back on, and all that was left on the big screens was the wings tour logo. khrys and i stayed there until the staff told us we had to clear out, just trying to reel it all in. we took a taxi back to our airbnb, ate a late convenience store dinner, and just fangirled over the whole thing until it was like 4 in the morning.

---

i noticed

speaking sections: bts’s tagalog pronunciation was pretty interesting. idk, if you were there then you’d know what i mean, but ofc some words they could say pretty flawlessly. most filipinos can kinda tell when someone is foreign/from abroad because their tagalog has an accent (like mine has a slight “american” accent sometimes, idk how else to describe it). the best way i can describe bts’s accent is that their tagalog almost sounded japanese? like the way they were hitting the syllables was very phonetically. sometimes i couldn’t understand what they were trying to say, so i just nodded and smiled lol. i’m not trying to make fun of them, but it’s just interesting to me since i’m a native tagalog speaker and i just ended up noticing it lol.

jimin and jin’s accents were hella cute. i remember there was a part during one of their middle ments (i can’t remember when exactly lol) where jin was trying to say something in tagalog and no one could understand his pronounciation, so the fans and members kept laughing. bts also spoke to each other in korean sometimes, so you had to just use context clues to know what they were talking about if you didn’t understand korean, but majority of the speaking segments were in either english or tagalog, so that was neat.

mic problems: i noticed, starting from jungkook’s solo stage, that some of the headsets and hand mics didn’t deliver the best sound. it could have been from all the sweat and wear from soundcheck earlier, but idk. like sometimes the sound was a bit more faint than the other members, and the members’ needed to adjust their headsets so the sound would stop dying out. it wasn’t too bad to where you couldn’t hear anything, but i bet it annoyed the members a lot lol. i think the most prominent mic problems where during the beginning of jungkook (headset) and hobi’s (hand mic) solo stages and a few of suga and rapmon’s stages (hand mic). luckily, the fan chants were on point and hella loud, so that made up for any mic problems tbh.

aesthetics: holy the whole visual direction and aesthetics for this tour was on point. it was like watching the blood, sweat, and tears mv live. idk who organized, conceptualized, and brought to live the aesthetics on this tour, but kudos to you fam. literally all of it, from the vcrs to the transitions between each stage was freaking seamless and gorgeous. even the live cinematography was freaking amazing. watching from the big screens was not a problem, and i thank jesus for whomever was directing that. it was literally like watching an live mv be made. i really can’t wait for the seoul/japan dvds for this concert man.

hyungline support: i hella, hELLA loved how extra supportive pi armys were to hyungline, who i think is pretty underappreciated. you could really see it during their solo stages, the respectful awe during suga’s, the “we love you” fanchants during rapmon’s, the crowd singing and hyping hobi up during his, and the fans singing along and cheering jin on during his stage. ofc, maknaeline also got a helluva lot of support, too, but i just loved how pi armys really supported hyungline too.

members’ preferred sections: i thought it was kind of crazy to predict where the members would prefer to be, but damn are armys good at that. the section khrys and i were sitting in were stage right and we saw a lot of jin, jungkook, and rap monster. suga also kept coming back to our side. taehyung, jimin, hobi, and suga stayed mostly on the stage left side. i thought it was crazy that some fans that bought standing tickets were trying to trade sections cause that’s where their bias would more than likely be, but hey what did i know? this was my first concert lol.

taehyung: so it might just be cause he’s my bias, but ofc i ended up paying attention to tae a bit more. i hate to say it, but i was almost disappointed in him??? i mean his stage and performances were on point but i felt like he wasn’t as playful/interactive as usual? i think i was just reading too much into him tbh. i learned later through the v live he did later that same night that he was also feeling sick/unwell, so that might also be why he didn’t look as playful/engaging as i hope he’d be. ofc, i don’t know what happened and tbh i really don’t know him well enough personally to judge on that kind of , either, so i needa just stop thinking i know him like the back of my hand lol.

afterthoughts

i still can’t believe i saw them in person, and it really is true what they say – that they’re way more gorgeous in real life. how is that possible???? i have no idea. the melanin was popping on those boys, tho, lovely freaking tans on everyone except suga who is paler than everyone no matter what he does tbh. from my view and angle, they all looked pretty tall, like around 5’10 (178 cm) each, even though suga and jimin are shorter than that.

pi armys are hella amazing, supportive, and helpful. so glad to be a part of all those amazing fan projects for bts man.

idk if its just me and my more americanized/western attitude, but i was hella vibing and jamming throughout the whole concert rather than fangirling and screaming, and i kinda wish everyone else was too. maybe i’m just not as fangirly as the others, but i was screaming my off like it was a riot. i feel like if i watched any fancams from my section, you could probably hear me cursing throughout most of them lol. me and khrys’s only regret is not buying anything to drink before we settled in our seats; we lost our voices hella fast ahaha. i know kpop concerts are pretty different from regular concerts, so the atmosphere is bound to be different. i’m guilty of recording some of the moments, but man it was kinda scary just seeing that most of the fans in the standing section had the phones out the whole time. like damn, the lightstick was hard enough to always have up in the air, how do y’all do it?? i needa work on my arm days man lol.

and holy the fans fam. like walking into the stadium and seeing them all hyped the up for bts, i kinda understood why performers did it. that freaking rush and amazement, knowing you’re going to be performing in front of thousands of your fans. it was exhilarating, and i wasn’t even the one performing!

overall, it was a goddamn experience and everything i could possibly imagine and more. you know, i never thought in my life that i would ever go to a kpop concert. i always thought i would end up pining forever until it became a distant, but fond memory of my youth. now i can’t wait to look back on this day 30 years from now. hopefully by then i’ll be a concert vet and scoffing at my former concert- hahaha. i really couldn’t have imagine a better experience than going with my best friend. girl took me on a feels trip and had me on my toes the whole trip. khrys, i love you .

of course, khrys and i didn’t go back home empty-handed. we went back to moa the next day to snag some unofficial merch sold by vendors outside the arena. khrys was balling and wanted to go all out, so she came out of there with like two shirts, a jacket, two bags, and her army bomb. i just got a tshirt and some keychains.

welp, that was my first experience. if you actually made it through this, mazel tov! if you have any questions or comments, just leave em down below. thanks for putting up with this ! :D