The State Tower rises proudly on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. Its facade, with hundreds of curved balconies and thousands of pillars, has a mesmerising effect on the eye. At the top, 820 feet above the loud, heavy streets of Bangkok, is the Sky Bar and its dazzling golden dome, made famous by a starring role in the £454 million-grossing film, The Hangover Part II. Elsewhere in the building are two five-star hotels and the world’s highest open-air restaurant, Sirocco, on the 64th floor.

Just 500 metres down the road, to the south, is its sister building, the Sathorn Unique Tower. It's rather less salubrious, lying derelict and dilapidated 27 years after its construction began. Its hollow floors stripe the skyscraper in shadows while its base is cordoned off and guarded by security. Once destined to be scores of luxury flats, it now only hosts two large advertising billboards.

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The Sathorn Unique Tower was one of hundreds of high-rise developments started in the Thai capital in the Nineties as the city enjoyed boom years, but when the Asian financial crisis struck in 1997, construction was halted and, unlike many others high-rises around it, never restarted.

In the building’s 20 colourful years of stagnation, it has become more commonly known as the "Ghost Tower" and has been landlord not to Bangkok's middle class but only copper wire thieves, graffiti artists and illegal urban explorers. When a storm hits Bangkok, residents say rubbish rains down from the building’s vacant floors.

The Sathorn Unique has also been at the centre of numerous complex court battles over the debts incurred by its decay, while its owner and architect Rangan Torsuwan was found guilty (but later acquitted) of allegedly plotting to assassinate the president of the Thai supreme court. A Swedish backpacker, 30-year-old Stig Johan Kristian Hammarsten, was found hanged on the 43rd floor in 2014, adding further to the tower’s sense of macabre. Some claim it is haunted.

How do people get inside? Handing 200 baht (£4.60) to security might do the trick, according to Chris Wiersma, a Dutch entrepreneur and travel blogger who climbed to the tower’s top in 2015.

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“The lowers floors up to around the 35th seemed quite finished to me,” he said. “They have railings on the balcony, partly wooden floors installed and even the bathrooms have tiles, toilets and baths.

“From the 35th floor up the construction gets less and less complete. Fewer railings on the balconies, open shafts for plumbing and no more wooden floors but only concrete with holes in it.

Graffiti inside the Sathorn Unique Credit: christravelblog.com

“The intimidating part comes from the fact that you don’t know what you’ll see around each corner.”

In recent years Pansit Torsuwan, son of Rangan and now in charge of the building, has attempted to clamp down on urban exploration of the tower. Two years ago, he filed criminal trespassing charges against a number of visitors.

“Luckily, [the building’s] structure was already completed right before the crisis, only the dome was left to be covered,” he told Telegraph Travel.

“Some mechanics and electronics were destroyed or stolen, such as elevators, escalators, as well as electrical wire and water pumps. The only issue that concerns me about the safety of the building is that a lot of people want to climb up there, to take photos, or party, or some sort of adventure.

“Many spots in the building are not safe, some floors are half completed, rails not installed yet. It is very easy to fall down and have a serious accident.”

Mr Torsuwan, who laughs at suggestions that the building is haunted, said he was “sad” it had fallen into disrepair but is working hard to find a buyer and says there are plenty of foreign investors interested.

The building's roof, where a signature dome sits on its sister building, the State Tower Credit: © 2016 Stephen J. Boitano/Stephen J. Boitano

Will it ever be finished?

“Of course it has to be done one way or another,” he said.

“If it can be done within my authority I will need to compensate every stakeholder fairly, so everyone leaves this place with too much hard feeling. Of course 20 years is too much pain.”

In the meantime it continues to disturb the city’s increasingly glittering skyline. With neither development or demolition seemingly any closer, the Sathorn Unique Tower looks destined to remain one of the world’s most prominent temples to urban decay.