Anam Global House: Double Room

★ CLICK HERE to see a separate post about Anam Global House's facilities ★

Getting There...

On Saturday 24th August me and Louise packed our stuff, left the hostel in Hongdae and caught a cab to Korea University with the help of the hostel's landlord who knew English. The taxi driver was nice, he tried to engage conversation with me since I was sat in the front despite being a foreigner who knew very little Korean. I could only manage one worded answers.

From Hongdae to Anam at around 1pm (yay, traffic!) it took us almost 1 hour for 17,000won which isn't bad at all. Definitely cheaper than what England charges, even though I consider Leeds' taxi's as one of the cheapest in England it's still more expensive than Korea. During my first year of university I would pay around £4 for a taxi from the train station to my accommodation, which was only a 15 minute walk away, ride was less than 5 minutes long. Whereas here a £10 taxi is worth an hour's ride during peak time. Obviously it worked out even better than we were splitting the cost (so £5 each!).

Moving on, the taxi driver didn't know how to get to the accommodation area. He had to use his sat nav to get to Korea University in the first place anyway. The landlord told us that the taxi driver would go to the main gates and ask the wardens, in which he did. He was told to go around the university and up this big hill. Once we passed the gates to the accommodation area we didn't know where to go for Anam Global House (AGH), luckily a KUBA member was there to tell the taxi driver where to go. The AGH was located on top of this incredibly steep hill.

Checking In

After unloading our luggage and saying goodbye to the taxi driver, we headed to the AGH lobby to check-in. Here we signed a document to state that we understood the dorm rules, paid for borrowed bedding (20,000won), handed over a copy of our chest X-ray results, received our door cards and then we were taken up to our room with the assistance of a KUBA buddy.

Anam Global House

Louise was told that the place had just finished construction/furnishing the day before, which was half a lie. The rooms were ready and furnished when we arrived but the floors were covered in dust and debris. The lifts were still boarded up on the inside, and the doors were covered in this blue wrapping so whenever we got on it felt like we just jumped into a horror movie. On some floors, even a few weeks later on as I'm typing this, the chairs in the lounge are still in plastic wrapping. There are still some ongoing maintenance work happening. A few days ago some guys came in to seal the edges of our floors, and last week people came in a few times to tweak the door a bit and double check if the lighting worked.

Anyway, moving away from the complaints.

AGH is a new dormitory located behind Anam House 2 (male) on top of a hill. You must tap your card at the 2nd set of doors to get in.

On the first floor there is a lobby, mail room, laundry room, dining hall, kitchen and doors that leads to the male rooms.
The first two floors are for males and floor 3-7 are for females. Each floor has a lounge room with sofas, chairs and tables, this is where you can get Wifi signal. There is also a water filter machine inside which dispenses cold and hot water. Just outside the lounge room is the floor's lobby where you can get the elevator down and bin your trash - remember to separate them!

To get into your room you must tap your card on the door handle. The door will beep, signifying that it has been unlocked.

Once you step inside you must remove your shoes at the door, like typical Asian rooms. Leave your card in the card slots located to your left, this will turn on the electricity for your room as well as internet. To your right there is a cupboard to put shoes in and perhaps other stuff.
Upon stepping into the 'mini hallway' to your left is the bathroom area. On the wall on the toilet side there's a switch to turn on the main light (large one in the bedroom area, and the hall light (located in between bathroom and wardrobe). You can also turn on the air con here. Just press the button in an orange-y brown colour, unfortunately I still have yet to know how to lower the AC - the thing is entirely in Korean.

The bathroom area has an interesting design to it. You get a sink with space on the sides for your stuff, and on the right wall there is a rail to hang your hand towel.
There are switches on each side of the sink to turn on the lights. On the left wall the top switch turns on the shower cubicle's light, middle switch turns on sink area light, and bottom switch turns on the shower cubicle's fan. Meanwhile the top switch on the right wall turns on the toilet cubicle's light, and bottom turns on the fan.
Below the left wall's switches there are two 2-pin sockets for shavers and etc. However, these ARE NOT shaver sockets, just standard 2-pin sockets.
Toilet 'cubicle' is pretty small, but just enough room to get in and out at least.
Shower cubicle has a frosted door, behind it there is a shower curtain to help prevent water leaking out. Here there is a large mirror (chest up) so you can do some skincare while in the shower. There is also a handy little shelf to store your showering products!
You can easily control the water pressure in the shower, please note that the highest pressure actually HURTS (yes I've tried). Though, because the space is just decently sized sometimes you may accidentally hit the handle and change the water pressure and/or temperature.

Opposite the bathroom are 2 tall wardrobes.
There is a rail to hang clothing (you must buy clothes hangers yourself), a top shelf that is pretty damn high hence the sparse usage, and 2 large drawers. Plenty of space to store your clothes!
On the right door there is a mirror, large enough to see from the neck up. Below it there is a rail to hang stuff, here I used it to hang my belts.

Bedroom area contains 2 beds and desks. There is also a lovely huge window, sadly you cannot open the window a lot to let some fresh air in, perhaps just 10cm. As you can see, the curtains don't do a fabulous job at blocking the light out entirely.
The room is pretty big, the walking space in between the beds is spacious enough to fit another bed in (or just to roll around on). Beneath the beds are 3 large storage compartments. As you can see AGH is very generous with the storage space provided for students.

The desk area is very generous in terms of space and storage as well! Lots of shelves, decent amount of working space, and a face mirror that can be opened to reveal another shelf! As you can see I have yet to use the very top shelf, this is purely because it is very high, so I may decide to put tall things up there, decorations/ornations, or stuff that I would rarely use.
On the desk there is an extension lead embedded onto it. There are 3 sockets so you can easily plug your laptop and other electronics in without having to invest on your own extension lead. Well, this is only convenient for students with 2-pin plug electronics. We foreign students using 3-pin plugs are better off bringing our own exentsion lead and adaptor plug. Please note that the picture provided is a week old, I have now abandonned the provided extension lead plugs entirely and plugged my own extension lead directly onto the mains wall socket with an adaptor. My extension lead is currently sitting on top of the embedded one. The ethernet cable was also provided when we arrived.
Oh and I forgot to add to the picture!!! There is a desk lamp right above the working space/desk/my laptop, convenient for those late nights where one of us is sleeping and the other one is working hard to meet a deadline haha;;

Overall, I am enjoying my stay at the AGH, minus the fact that the kitchen sucks. But I will rant about that in another post that will be posted very soon (once I have acquired pictures on a day where there is no one in there cooking something delicious).