Of all the places that I visited in Vietnam, Hue in the central region is easily one of my favorites because this was the seat of power of the last Vietnamese monarchy. Being a former imperial city, I thought this place HAD to have some remains of the royal court besides the Forbidden City so I did my research and found out about the Ho Quyen, Asia's version of the Roman Colosseum.
After an almost 13-hour trip from Hanoi, I checked in my hostel to rest and have lunch. There's nothing on my itinerary that day except to visit Ho Quyen (Tiger Arena) and the eat Hue's special Bun Bo Hue so I took my time. I couldn't find a tour company that does tours to the arena & I didn't want to risk getting scammed by locals, I was so praning I rented a bike from my hostel (35,000 VND or 70 PHP) and went on a DIY trip instead.
I powered up Google Maps and familiarized my way which was 5.3km from where I was staying. Not bad, I've ran 5km marathons and thought this is gonna be easy with a bike. I was wrong. Around 10 minutes in, it started to rain and I was so close to turning around but I didn't travel all the way to central Vietnam just to let a little rain stop me hahaha! Good thing I had my rainproof jacket with me so I didn't get super soaked.
When I got there it was padlocked, maybe because not too many people visit the place anymore but the guard must have noticed that I biked all the way here in the rain so he opened it for me, hahaha!
Built in the early 1800's, Ho Quyen (Tiger Arena) is part of Vietnam's dark past like the gladiator fights in Rome. This is the place where elephants were pitted against tigers to death for the entertainment of the royal family. Yeah at first it looks good for the tiger until I found out that they were actually declawed, defanged, and drugged to fix the fights. It's so fixed that if one elephant can't finish the job, another was sent to help. The reason for this is because tigers symbolized rebellion while elephants symbolized the monarchy. In other words: elephants always had to win.
A few meters away from the Tiger Arena is the Long Chau Temple, locally known as Dien Voi Re or Palace of the Crying Elephants.
According to Vietnamese legends, an elephant ran to this hill and roared for an hour after his master died in battle hence the name, Dien Voi Re or the Palace of the Crying Elephants. Since then, the Long Chau Temple was built to be the final resting place of the monarchy's war elephants. This is where they were buried and worshiped, a way of thanking them for their service to the royal court.
Sadly however, the place isn't as well-maintained as it was before because of the city's limited budget and the on-going renovations in the Forbidden City, so there's little to nothing left for the Dien Voi Re.
Open altar
Inside the huge temple where I assume the best, most-favored elephants are buried.
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