iHouse ChinChin

The worst hostel hotel I've ever met. Booked on the Roux Island website. The description of the hotel did not mention that there is no lift for guests and their heavy suitcases to the second floor! All rooms - and there are three or four located on the second and third floors. Climbing the stairs turns into a quest - steps 30 cm high, bringing up the suitcases is an insurmountable obstacle. All the photos on the site are a communal lobby, from which at least three rooms go. Kitchen one for all. My room (door) was right next to the kitchen. Inside are small rooms with squatly low ceilings and a small oblong fighter window. The exit to the balcony (!) is a space of 30 * 50 cm. At the same time on the left - a blank wall with a barred window of another building, straight - another blank wall, and on the right - a garbage dump! Seeing all these “beautiful things” I had a little tantrum and we moved them out of this bungalow as a matter of urgency.

I am going to start with the review of the hotel and amenities, before I continue on to the horror story I experienced at iHouse Chin Chin: It is a cute contemporary house that provides private rooms to guests and open public spaces to promote a sense of community for travelers. This is the main reason why I chose iHouse Chin Chin. I stayed in the triple room which provided 1 bed (with a mattress) and 2 loft style areas with only a 2 inch mat and comforter. There was a mini-fridge that had hair inside of it, the shower walls had black mold growing, and the wood around the sink in the bathroom was rotten and shedding (due to the fact that there was no shower curtain that separated the shower area from the rest of the bathroom). This fact also was the cause of the entire bathroom to be soaked to the point where water was escaping into the main bedroom area. Continuing onto the horror story: On the night of October 29th (early morning October 30th), me and two other guests attempted to return to our hotel room. When we arrived at the hotel, we tried to open the door which led to the common area that led to where our room was located. However, this door was locked. The only way to lock the door was from the inside of the building, so it was assumed that one of the other guests in the hotel locked the door. We knocked on the door hoping that one of the other guests in the hotel would hear us and unlock the door, but nobody did (it was 2 a.m.). So, we went downstairs to the main lobby to try and find and employee to help with this situation. There was no one to be found. There was an emergency number posted on the front desk that said to call if there was an immediate emergency. I called that number all night with no success. No one from management answered my calls to unlock the door. So me and my guests were forced to sleep on the floor of the lobby for that night. At 7am, the first employee arrived, and was shocked to see us sleeping on the floor of the lobby. When we explained our situation, she called the manager/owner of the establishment for the special key to unlock the door. The business did not have that key available on the site. The employees was then forced to bang on the door, awakening the other guests and asking them to open the door. It was only then were we able to finally gain access to the common area that led to our room door. After the incident I spoke directly with employees who then spoke with the manager/owner to provide some sort of refund due to the hotel's negligence (unavailability to solve our problem, giving guests access to a door that can only be locked from the inside, and not having the key available on site).There was little empathy from the manager/owner to amend this problem. The employees had an idea of which guest locked the door from the inside, so their plan was to have that guest confess then have them pay the price of our 1 night that we were locked out. But when approached, the guest claimed that they did not lock the door. The employees told us that there was nothing else that they could do since the room was booked for two days, I would have to pay the FULL price of the stay despite the fact that we weren't even in the room for the days I booked and were sleeping the LOBBY FLOOR. I was highly disappointed in how my case was handled and especially the little to no care that the owner gave when he was told about our case (in front of us, in person). This was my first and last time staying at a hostel-like establishment and my LAST time EVER staying at iHouse Chin Chin.

I stayed in this guesthouse for 3 nights with friends when we visited Seoul last week ago, we booked the triple room and fortunately the room is located on 2nd floor convenient to us to moving the luggage up and down when check in and check out since seems like there is no elevator be installed in building. The staffs were nice and they kindly allowed us to did early check in. The room is clean and cozy, there is one 3ft bed and bunk bed for others, the upstairs seems a bit high and steep, need to be careful when you step up or down but the mattress and and the blanket are warm and cozy made us slept tight and well during our stay. One more thing I want to suggest the owner is the curtain in shower room, it should be longer enough to cover the mirror wall of the room. Excepting some inconvenient points about the bunk bed and restroom we really enjoyed our stay in I-house Chin Chin. We would love to revisit the guesthouse for our next trip in Seoul for sure. :)