Ho Thuy Tien, the abandoned water park outside Hue

Ho Thuy Tien is a water park that opened unfinished in 2004 and emptied out within a few years. A dragon-shaped aquarium still stands in the middle of the lake, 8 km from Hue, and for a decade it was the most photographed ruin in Vietnam.

What it is today depends on when you ask. The site has closed, reopened, been patrolled, tidied, fenced and scheduled for demolition more than once. Every account of it is older than it looks.

What is the dragon?

The dragon is an aquarium with a stairway inside it. A domed building on a causeway in the lake, finished in blue and white scales with a dragon's head on top, it once held tanks on the ground floor and viewing galleries above.

The tanks have stood empty for years. What remains is the shell, the spiral stair and the view from the dragon's mouth over the water, which is the photograph everybody comes for.

How does a water park end up like this?

Money ran out before the park was finished, and the operator never got it back. The park opened in 2004 while still incomplete, on reported investment in the tens of billions of dong. Visitor numbers never came close to covering what it cost to run.

Nobody demolished it because demolition also costs money. So the slides, the amphitheatre and the dragon stayed where they were, the forest took the rest, and the place became famous about 10 years later.

Can you actually get in?

Access is the part that keeps changing, and nothing written before this year should be trusted on it. For years the gate stood officially shut while a guard waved people through for a small informal payment. The whole thing ran on a shrug.

Ask at your hotel in Hue on the morning you plan to go. A motorbike-taxi rider who went last week knows more than any page about this place, including this one.

What is left to look at?

Less each year, and the dragon is what survives. The amphitheatre, the water slides and the crocodile enclosure have gone or been stripped. Crews have cut back the vegetation that made the old photographs so striking.

The setting carries it. A lake in pine forest with a derelict building in the middle of it is worth the ride whether or not the slides still stand. The walk around the shore takes about an hour.

How dangerous is it?

Derelict concrete is the risk, not crime. Broken edges, open drops, rusted reinforcement and a lake with no railings are all there. Nobody maintains any of it, and the nearest first aid is in Hue.

Wear shoes you can climb in and keep off anything that moves when you touch it. Do not go alone. The safety guide covers the ordinary risks of a trip here; this is a different category, and the only person managing it is you.

How do you get there from Hue?

8 km south-west of the centre, 15 to 20 minutes by motorbike or taxi, on the road towards Thuy Bang. The route passes within a kilometre or two of the tomb of Khai Dinh. Pairing the two is the sensible way to build the morning.

Hired motorbikes are the usual method and a Grab car works as well. Ask the driver to wait, or arrange a return: cars do not pass this gate every 5 minutes.

Is it worth a morning?

Ho Thuy Tien is worth an hour if ruins interest you and nothing at all if they do not. It is not a sight in the sense the rest of Hue is a sight. No ticket desk, no explanation, nothing restored, which is exactly the appeal for the people who come.

Treat it as the strange half of a day whose other half is imperial. The two-day Hue route runs on the citadel and the tombs. This fits into its second morning for anyone who wants the twentieth century as well as the nineteenth.