The Amazing Race -- Still in Indonesia
Reading is Fundamental
This weeks teams are still in Indonesia and they're still having trouble reading the clues correctly. This week the show didn't pull any mean little trick. Although maybe the buddha clue wasn't very well written as most of the teams had a hard time figuring out what it meant.
The first task is to ride to the Colonial Dutch Area on a bike in costume with a group of bicyclists to Fort Vredeburg to get their next clue. Ernie and Cindy have a problem when their Ernie's pedal comes off his bike, which allows many of the times to get ahead of them.
The next destination is the Salakmalong Village where they'll find their next clue at a restaurant. They have to ride their in a taxi and these drivers drive like Sonic the hedgehog. I like amusement park rides, but even that taxi ride would be too much for me. Didn't help that a lot of the drivers seemed to like to laugh in a very creepy fashion.
Detour -- Rice Field or Grass Fed: In Rice Field teams have to deliver a dinner plate to one of the workers and then plant 300 rice plants in this muddy field. In Grass Fed you have to fill a sack with grass, then go grab a sheep and grab six buckets of water.
In Grass Fed, if the farmers didn't think you filled you grass sack, like landing on Jail in Monopoly you didn't get to pass GO and collect your $200. You had to go back and fill your sack up some more. This is also a task that caused Larry and Zac some problems, because they didn't read their clue correctly. You were only allowed to use two buckets at a time, and they used more. The Snowboarders even seemed to try to drop them a hint by telling them to read their clue, but they didn't get it.
The path to Grass Fed must have also been very slippery. Several team mates fell, but none as much as Cathi from Team Grandparents, but she just popped back up like a Jack-In-The-Box and kept on trucking.
If I were a betting woman, I would have bet that Marcus and Amani would be the team to be eliminated, this week. When they were doing Grass Fed and were told to go back to GO and fill up their sack with more grass, they decided to abandon that task and go do Rice Field instead, which I thought was a pretty dumb move as they were almost halfway done with the Grass Fed task.
The next destination after the Detour is Borobudur Temple where teams must wear a sarong around their mid-section and climb to the top of the temple. Once they do, they get a Roadblock.
Teams must identify and count the four different hand gestures on the Buddha statues placed around the temple. Then they must be able to tell how many of each there are and demonstrate the hand signals. This messed up a lot of the teams. The Snowboarders and Larry and Zac only got it by working together.
As the Snowboarders were leaving they gave Marcus and Amani the answer and they still didn't get it. The only team member to figure the thing out on his own was Bill of Team Grandparents. The other teams worked together to get through the task correctly.
Then it was off to the pitstop, but a lot of teams told their taxis to wait for them and they had to go back to them and pay them, which is what caused the team that got eliminated to be eliminated.
Larry and Zac checked in first, but because they didn't follow the clue correctly, they got a fifteen minute penalty. So the line-up was as follows:
1. The Snowboarders who won a trip to Dubac.
2. Larry and Zac
3. Jeremy and Sandy [who actually had had enough of their taxi driver and hoofed it, so they didn't have to go back to pay their taxi.]
4 The Double J's [who thankfully didn't seem to be at each other's throats as much as usual.]
5. Ernie and Cindy
6. Amani and Marcus
7. The Grandparents
8. The Twins.
The Showgirls were the one to get eliminated. The interesting thing is I think they were team 3 at the end of the last leg, which shows being at the head of the pack at the end of one leg, doesn't mean you'll be at the back of the pack at the end of the next leg.
I'm frankly amazed by Team Grandparents. After their poor performance during the first leg, I thought they were goners for sure, but their still in their plugging away.
If I have a favorite team, I think it's the Snowboarders. They seem very cool and they don't mind helping other teams, which I like. They're not as cutthroat as some teams can get.
It's a terrible thing to say, but now that Team Survivor is gone it seems the real race has finally begun.
