Amazing Race : Karma Is A Biatch!

Last time we saw our teams, they were sweltering in the heat in Jaipur, India. The next leg didn't get any better temperature-wise. This week the teams traveled over 2,000 miles to Phuket, Thailand.

For those who've tried to pronounce that city's name, it's pronounced Foo-Ket - not the way you're thinking! Once there, they had to locate a famous statue of a gorilla which is located at the Phuket Zoo in order to complete their Roadblock Task. Most teams had drivers who knew where the gorilla was. Mel and Mike's driver swore he knew it was at the beach. Wrong.

Once at the zoo, teams had to first pose with a tiger. Sounds easy enough.

The handler had one arm.

Would you want to sit next to a tiger whose handler was missing an arm?

Jen put it best. "I didn't pee on myself!"

Next, teams had to go do one of the tricks from the elephant show where they laid down on the ground and the elephant would walk over them. He would tap his foot on each person before stepping over and then he squatted down on top of the third person.

Apparently, the elephant proved that Mel is a bottom.

You know you wanted that image.

Next, teams had to travel to an herb shop and ask the shopkeeper to open numbered bins until they found a bin that contained a clue. Two problems. He was very slow and spoke no English. Since it was all about luck and no skill, the mini-stuntmen (known as Tweedles to Jaime and Cara - the girls said the brothers reminded them of Tweedledee & Tweedledum from Alice in Wonderland) were able to get out of there on the first try.

After leaving the shop, teams had to choose one of two Detours: 100 Barrels or 2 Miles. In 100 barrels, teams had to prepare a fishing ship for 10 days at sea by moving 53 empty barrels from the bottom of the boat to the upper deck and to fill 47 barrels with water. In 2 miles, teams had to take a rickshaw and have one member pull the rickshaw with their partner in the seat over a 2 mile stretch to a park.

This is where things began to get interesting. Tools and pumps had been left out for teams to make adjustments to their rickshaws, including pumping up the tires. The Tweedles arrived to the location first and after they pumped up the tires of their rickshaw, they decided to collect all the tools and dump them into a box. Their goal was to make the others have to work harder and to think they needed to do more work by filling the box up.

Bad move by the Tweedles. They did arrive at the Pit Stop first, but they could not check in. They incurred a 30-minute penalty for their intentional tampering with the tools. In addition, the instructions for the 2 miles detour stated that teams could not hire any help for the task. The brothers decided to ask their cab driver to lead them to the park. They incurred another 30-minute penalty for breaking the rules.

Thanks to the penalties, the brothers ended up in 3rd position for the leg. It turned out that they had had a 55-minute lead over the next team. In that last 5 minutes, Tammy & Victor (1st) and Jaime & Cara (2nd) arrived at the Pit Stop. Karma is a biatch boys. That's what you get for cheating.

The drama didn't end there! When Margie & Luke arrived at the Pit Stop, Margie had been complaining about freezing even though it was extremely hot. She ended up collapsing from dehydration and was carried away in order to cool and drink water. I just hope this doesn't keep them from continuing in the race. I want them to win!

In the end, Mel & Mike could not make up the time they lost when their driver took them to the beach instead of the zoo and were just beat out by Jen & Kisha by a few minutes. I had really hoped they would make it to the Final 3. You did us proud boys!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30, 2009 and is filed under . You can leave a response and follow any responses to this entry through the Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) .

1 comments

I was rooting for the dad and son team. Oh well.