The administration of the central Vietnamese province of Thua Thien-Hue has revoked rights to a land plot allocated for a local tourism developer who failed to build anything but “spooky and surreal” waterpark on the 500,000 hectare lot.

In the early 2000s, Haco Hue Co. Ltd. was permitted to develop the Ho Thuy Tien (Daffodil Lake) waterpark on the plot, just outside the provincial capital of Hue. The facility opened to visitors in 2006, but poor business shut the park down in 2011. The developer then announced that they would “embark on a new project.”

In October 2014, the provincial administration approved a plan to turn the waterpark into a luxury ecotourism area. However, Haco Hue was financially unable to implement the project and requested the province seek out a new developer.

The project stalled, and with no progress made local authorities felt it was time to revoke rights to the land.

“The land plot and all existing construction units are now under the management of the province’s center for land management,” Phan Van Thong, director of the provincial department of natural resources, said.

The waterpark developer violated land laws related to its failure to put the project into use as planned, Thong explained.

The Thua Thien-Hue administration will continue to seek out investors to launch a new project on the area, the official added.

The park is now an ideal place for cattle 

Ho Thuy Tien rose to fame overnight in January 2016, after Huffington Post associate editor Suzy Strutner featured the park in an article headlined “This abandoned waterpark in Vietnam is not for the faint of heart.”

Strutner provoked curiosity of the park by describing it as somewhere “you won’t see in a tourists’ guide or map”.

“And if you ask a local to show you the way, there’s a good chance they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about,” she wrote.

The HuffPost author went on to list the distinctive features of the park, including live crocodiles that mingled among abandoned waterslides, “half-full aquarium tanks and a massive dragon structure whose interior looks vaguely like the set of a horror film.”

She also quoted a foreign visitor, who managed to find the waterpark through word-of-mouth direction, describing the park as “spooky as hell, but surreal.” Another visitor said his adrenaline “was flowing the whole time” when he explored the mold-covered slides winding through the park’s interior.

Strutner concluded that the abandoned tourism area is “certainly fun to explore,” and local youth and foreign visitors have indeed sought the park to satisfy their need for thrills and selfies.

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