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The leg takes place in Phuket, Thailand, and the two lead teams (the snowboarders and Zac & Laurence) are on a plane to Jakarta before the other six teams have even left the Pit Stop, but the other racers book seats all the way through before leaving, securing their arrival in Phuket almost an hour before the "lead" teams. Bill and Cathi's ability to pick the fastest cabbie plays out yet again in a nighttime race to a Marina, but they find the place closed until eight the morning anyway, so the whole first act was much ado about nothing. At 8:00 AM, they all run out to a floating pier (and the snowboarders quickly get the lead back) to get a Detour clue. This is how they learn that they have to either arrange beach chairs or plant coral for reef reconstruction, both of which will supposedly repair damage from the 2004 tsunami. Awfully nice of them.
They all motorboat out to a tiny island and get to work at pretty much the same time. Andy and Tommy continue to do well as they plant coral, while Justin & Jennifer and Marcus & Amani and Jeremy & Sandy and Bill & Cathi struggle against the current, and experienced lifeguards Liz and Marie struggle with the beach chairs, even with help from other racers. Most teams attempting the coral task end up switching, although the siblings manage to survive both the current and their own persistent bickering. Then the wind wreaks havoc with the beach umbrellas. After the Detour, teams have to navigate to two towering islands and do a Road Block where they climb a sheer rock wall to retrieve their clue. Andy aces that, so he and Tommy win their third leg in a row, but their first one that didn't require another team to screw up.
Ernie and Cindy get lost in the ocean on the way to the Road Block and drop a few positions, while Sandy and Jeremy's Test Drive Of Love hits a few potholes on their way to a third-place finish. And Laurence and Zac, who have sailed around the world, can't manage to navigate across the sea to the floating Pit Stop and end up having to follow another team's boat. Amani and Marcus get lost in the floating village while other teams beat them to the mat, but they don't come in last; that honor goes to Liz and Marie, who find out that it's a non-elimination leg anyway. So they have another leg to prove themselves, and I have another leg to figure out how to tell them apart. I think I'm getting close, y'all!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"Indonesia has 129 active volcanoes," Phil informs us like we were just in the middle of a conversation, "more than any other country in the world." Then we're back at the Buddhist temple at Borobudur, which Phil tells us was covered by volcanic ash and dense jungle for centuries. But now that it's back in daylight, it's both a place of worship and the start of the fourth leg in a race around the world. Two-fer! We waste no time getting started with the winners of the leg (and the leg before that): Andy and Tommy, whose starting time is 8:17 AM. They rip their clue and we learn that they'll fly north to Phuket, Thailand, which Phil describes as a "tropical playground." After they land, they'll race to the end of a floating pier at a marina, where a red-and-yellow barrel awaits with yellow clue envelopes strapped to it. Did the old free-standing clue boxes get put on a terrorist watch list or something? Tommy interviews that they want a "clean, legit first place" this time, reminding us of how much Laurence helped them during the last leg. They hop into a cab, and are pretty stoked about going to Thailand. That's a good snowboarder word, right? Stoked? I think it's right up there with "enthused."
Laurence and Zac take off at 8:28 AM, which means that if you don't count the fifteen-minute penalty they incurred, they got to the mat four whole minutes ahead of the snowboarders. Some of that can probably be accounted for by the time Tommy spent giving the solution to the Road Block to Amani and Marcus, which ended up making no difference to the latter team at all. Laurence interviews that they don't want to make the same mistake they made yesterday, which they won't unless there's another Detour with a limited number of buckets, "but this game is full of the unexpected, so if we make a mistake, make sure we're with another team." The key to winning the Amazing Race: drag someone else down with you. In their cab to the airport, Zac says he's never been to Thailand, and asks his dad if he ever has. Laurence doesn't think so. If you can't remember everywhere you've been, it's possible you're too well traveled. Unless Laurence has a story that was the basis for The Hangover Part II.
Andy and Tommy are already at the airport, where the woman behind the ticket window tells them there are no direct flights to Phuket, but they can catch an imminent flight back to Jakarta and figure it out from there. That sounds cool to them. Laurence and Zac are also at the airport, and the snowboarders send them over to the window where they got their Jakarta tickets. Both teams are on the 9:40 AM flight. Literally, they're on the plane before we know it, planning to get seats through to Phuket once they reach Jakarta. What could go wrong?
Also at 9:40, Jeremy and Sandy are leaving in third place. "We're going to Bucket," Sandy "quips." Jeremy solo-interviews that the race has brought out things they need to work on in their relationship. Then we see them debating how to catch a cab on a busy road, and Sandy says they're each learning how the other reacts to stressful situations. Whenever someone says that, the answer is always "poorly." Sandy says in the cab that she's always wanted to visit Thailand. "It's going to be foreign, though. Once again." What? How does she know that? I thought the racers weren't supposed to know what to expect?
Jennifer and Justin are leaving at 9:41 AM, right behind them in fourth place. They're already getting on each other's nerves, as Justin wonders whether to descend a hill using steps instead of the sloping road, and Jennifer says the steps would kill her. An entire Eddie Murphy routine just started playing in my head. Ernie and Cindy are also close behind, leaving at 9:42 AM, in fifth place. Both those teams get cabs at about the same time, and Cindy reveals that she and Jeremy were just in Phuket. What are the chances? With their fresh local knowledge, they should be able to navigate flawlessly!
Marcus and Amani start their leg at 9:46 AM, in sixth place. They interview that they have four kids (and one very patient babysitter, apparently), and hope to teach them perseverance while on the race. I'm thinking the babysitter will also learn perseverance during their absence.
Bill and Cathi, the grandparents, are leaving in seventh place at 9:56 AM. Cathi reminds us that they're almost thirty years older than the other teams (again, not counting Laurence), but they wake up every morning ready to go. "I think we're going to be here for a while," she says. But the race is about moving! Don't stay where you are!
Finally the twins, Liz and Marie, are the last team to leave, at 10:05 AM. They interview that their dad died suddenly of a heart attack in December, but they're sure he'd be happy that they're doing the race. He'd probably be happier to not have had a heart attack.
The middle of the pack, led by Jeremy and Sandy, are arriving at the airport as Sandy tells us that she thinks the other two teams have an hour lead, while the rest of them are pretty bunched together. I wonder where she's getting such good intel. Eavesdropping on her camera crew's cell phone calls, maybe? Ernie and Cindy marvel at how quickly they got to the international airport from the temple. Those two teams get to the same ticket window and learn about a 12:45 flight to Jakarta, from whence they'll proceed to Phuket. The siblings and Team NFL are arriving outside, as are the grandparents, and soon all six teams have the same flight, which will arrive in Phuket at 6:50 PM, according to the red subtitles. That's one advantage of missing the first flight: you have time to book all the way through as opposed to taking a leap of faith on the very plane.
Speaking of which, in Jakarta, the snowboarders jog through the terminal as Tommy says, "I feel like we've been here before." They and Laurence & Zac look for ticket counters, but it's Team Adventure who finds one first. The bad news is that the flight to Phuket from Jakarta is full -- of Amazing Racers, of course, not that these guys know that yet. The snowboarders show up behind them and tickle the backs of their oblivious heads until Team Adventure gets tickets on a flight that'll get them to Phuket at 7:40 AM, nearly an hour after the teams who are "behind" them. The snowboarders get on the same flight, hoping for the best. Then an Amazing Blue Line representing the snowboarders and Team Adventure zooms up to Bangkok before bouncing back to Phuket, while the Amazing Red Line marking the other six teams goes directly to Phuket from Jakarta. Shots of gorgeous island scenery and wildlife, and then it's nighttime, as the first flight lands at 6:50 PM, in pitch dark. There's the usual race through the terminal to the taxi stand, where the dispatcher sets them all up with cabs. In the taxi with Jeremy, Sandy says they have no idea what's waiting for them at the marina, but "we're hoping when we get there, we're going to bed." Sounds likely. The twin in the purple shirt says, "Liz and I have all this Indonesian money" that they didn't exchange for Thai money. But they have a plan, which involves luck and prayer and Marie's "In Love With Thai" button. And, even better news: now I know Marie's the one in the purple shirt. There's a standard caravan-taxi race. Justin and Jennifer's driver promises them, "I fight for you." Good, now they don't have to. He passes Ernie and Cindy. But Bill and Cathi, who really kind of need to stop saying "chop-chop" in Asia, pass Ernie and Cindy as well while the driver karate-chops the horn, then passes the siblings and Team NFL as well. Sometimes I feel like Bill and Cathi are just one bad cabbie away from coming in last by four hours again.
The second flight, with the snowboarders and Team Adventure, lands in Phuket at 7:40, and the two teams head for the taxi stand, where they are dismayed to learn that the dispatcher already knows alllll about where they're going, because a bunch of other taxis already headed in that direction an hour ago. She finds their uniform dismay at hearing this even more amusing than I do, and I find their four-part harmony of "Ahhhhhh" pretty hilarious. After the ads, they're off into the night, with the snowboarders in last place. Quite a drop from first. How will they ever recover?
Jeremy and Sandy are rather surprised to find themselves the first team at the marina, given that "the guys" left the Pit Stop an hour before them. But the sign saying it's open at 8:00 is a pretty clear indication that they're in the right place anyway. It's also an indication that they're going to bed, like Sandy hoped, only on a stone floor rather than actual beds. Liz and Marie are the to arrive, and they give their driver a big hug. Which I guess is of more use to him than the Indonesian rupiah they must have offered him instead of the Thai baht that's the only money currently in their possession, because he didn't charge them anything at all. And that's for a drive of at least fifty minutes, given that they didn't arrive until the other two teams had landed. The twins are appropriately grateful, and even more surprised that they got there before the two "lead" teams. Ernie & Cindy show up , followed by Amani & Marcus, then Justin & Jennifer and Cathi & Bill, who must have made a pit stop along the way somewhere, because we saw them passing several teams who got here before them. I guess it can't be much fun running the Amazing Race with a 59-year-old prostate. Everyone has plenty of time to be surprised at the continued absence of Andy & Tommy and Laurence & Zac until they finally show up. "This game is so ridiculous," Cindy says. "It's so unpredictable." Put that in the promo.
Some twelve hours later, it looks like a beautiful morning at the marina, and everyone's awake and standing around on the back porch waiting for the official 8:00 AM opening time. They can see the big red barrel out on the end of the floating pier. As Justin says, "I don't think we're actually sure how we're going to get down there on the wobbly dock, but we're going to give it our best." Jennifer promises that she'll puke on a speedboat, a small fleet of which are tied to the beach. At 8:00, an attendant drops the rope stretched across the exit to the beach, and everyone runs down the sand to the water, with no regard whatsoever for order of arrival or even team cohesion, so thanks for filling up the entire first act with a lot of positioning info that ended up being completely irrelevant, show. The water's a few feet deep before the floating dock starts, so they all have to jump in, but Tommy lands on the platform surefootedly, allowing him to break free of the pack while the others are all still scrambling aboard. So that's their lead back already, and pretty decisively too. Back on the beach, while the others are still running for the clue, Andy opens the clue for a Detour.
Phil brings the room down a bit, telling us, "The 2004 tsunami that devastated Phuket was the deadliest in recorded history." Thanks, Mr. Brightside. After we see some photos of the destruction, Phil's walking along a rocky beach, adding, "Teams now have a chance to rebuild Thailand's tourism industry." Wow, that sounds like a big job. And they'll have to do it with a choice of Detour tasks that comprise "Coral Reconstruction" and "Beach Preparation." For Coral Reconstruction, they'll assemble a "coral nursery," which looks like a clothes rack made of blue PVC pipes. Then they'll carry it out into the water on a kayak not much bigger than the rack itself, along with a tray of some live coral. They'll sink the nursery to a buoy in what looks like about eight feet of water, and dive down to plant the coral pieces into it. And presumably there'll be fresh new reef here in just a few hundred years, so we can all look forward to a future Amazing Race season coming back to visit it. When the marine biologist swimming out there in scuba gear is satisfied with their work, he'll hand them their clue, in the form of what looks like a compass on a string. For Beach Preparation, each team collects twenty beach chairs and ten beach umbrellas from a storage shed, and then arranges them on the beach in the exact same pattern as the example previously laid out. Each team must use only chairs and umbrellas whose stickers match the one on their individual clue, so no random grabbing. When they get it right, the beach attendant will give them their clue. Andy and Tommy hop onto one of those waiting speedboats, which roars out into the sea, leaving the rest of the teams in the dust, where they seem likely to stay. Back on the shore, Team NFL, the siblings, and Jeremy and Sandy opt for Coral Reconstruction, while Ernie and Cindy prefer Beach Preparation. Laurence & Zac want to "build a reef" and Liz & Marie go for beach preparation. I'm sorry to say that the twins have changed clothes and are dressed nearly identically, so I'm back to square one on telling them apart. Dammit. Bill and Cathi bring up the rear with their decision to do Reef Reconstruction. It'll be just like working on their farm, but with more possibility of drowning.
The snowboarders are zooming over the water, marveling at the scenery and at the fleet of boats in their wake. Marcus and Amani's boat is in second place, and Marcus notices Justin in the bow of his boat, "think[ing] he's on the front of the Titanic." Sure enough, Justin gives out a whoop while Jennifer adds, "We're the king of the world!" "I was hoping you wouldn't say that," Justin says, but he welcomes her to Thailand and they high-five. For those two, that's a Family Ties-grade hug/cry. Jeremy and Sandy are enjoying the ride more than Sandy enjoyed sleeping on the beach. All the teams are having fun, in fact, as Liz and Marie's boat edges ahead of the rest, save Andy and Tommy's. "This is the best day so far," one of them says. "And we're in Thailand!" Now all they have to do is capitalize on that commanding lead of theirs.
Andy and Tommy's boat arrives at a tiny island about the size of a small neighborhood, and they hop off their boat to a sign with arrows pointing helpfully to "Coral Reconstruction" (left) and "Beach Preparation" (right). Heading left, they soon find an example nursery that serves as a display of what to build, and they get right to work with a base, a pile of pipe segments, and a rubber mallet. Approaching the island, the twins boast, "This is our Detour. We were ocean lifeguards for two summers." So they spent a lot of time arranging beach chairs? I guess I'll keep watching my own damn kid at the beach then, thanks very much. Behind them, Marcus is amusingly trash-talking across the water to the siblings as their boats approach the shore. Liz and Marie hop off their boat and run right, to the open-fronted building marked "Beach Storage Shed." They start rifling through the chairs looking for ones that have a yellow fish on them like their clue does. "Hurry, we have to go fast," snaps one of them, I assume Marie. Justin and Jennifer make landfall, and in the shorts she's wearing today you can see her knee brace, which explains her earlier reluctance to do stairs. How long has that been on? Since she refused to run a couple of legs ago? Since before they started the race? Seems relevant. Maybe we'll learn one day. Amani and Marcus are also off their boat, while the snowboarders already have an efficient building system going. Jeremy and Sandy head for Coral Reconstruction, but when Laurence and Zac land, they completely miss the sign pointing the way to the different Detours and wander off to the right. This is what happens when you're used to navigating without signs, I suppose. Bill and Cathi arrive , and as Cindy and Ernie pull up, Cindy says everyone got there at about the same time. "Really anyone's game at this point," she says. Spoken like a member of a last-place team. Laurence and Zac, the master navigators (just you wait), accidentally show up at the beach storage shed and decide to go with that rather than trying to find their way back to the coral task. Tommy and Andy are happy to be building a coral reef, as are Amani and Marcus, as she interviews that they pick tasks their kids are familiar with, like how they watched a TV show about the tsunami. "We didn't know how hard it would be, but we thought it'd be a way to give back," Marcus agrees. That seems to be kind of a theme this season, which I couldn't approve of more. It's nice to see The Amazing Race following a path of natural destruction and addressing it in some small way, rather than leaving a path of American-made destruction.
Jeremy and Sandy are starting to get a little snippy with each other as they try to put together their coral nursery, but not as much as Jennifer and Justin. Because that would be terrifying. Meanwhile, the twins are running into trouble digging their correct chairs out of the stacks in the hot storage shed. Ernie starts digging the crab-labeled chairs and umbrellas out for himself and Cindy, and he interviews that you needed some strength to dig the right chairs out of the stacks. These are old-school wood-and-canvas chairs, after all, not the plastic ones you see sometimes. Cindy tells him they need twenty, so he heads back for more. And with Laurence and Zac joining the search in the shed, at least the twins are getting a little help moving them around so they can get at the bottom layers. Although it must be like inviting a backhoe to a fossil dig.
Andy and Tommy have already finished their coral rack, and they carry it down to the beach, where they have to balance the ungainly thing on a little two-person kayak, as well as a tray the size of a large chessboard that holds a couple dozen chunks of coral in little cups that'll fit into the slots on the top of the nursery. Jennifer and Justin are hammering their rack tight, which Amani and Marcus should have done, because theirs comes partially apart when they try to drag it down to the water. "Why is this one not long enough?" Sandy asks Jeremy, probably not for the first time. The snowboarders have their big rack on their kayak, with Tommy more or less sitting inside it in the back, and Andy balancing the coral tray on his lap in front. They paddle up to a buoy and Andy hops into the water, Tommy following with the rack. Right away they discover there's a strong current, which is apparent as we see Andy swim a few powerful strokes underwater and yet hardly move at all. "Being surfers, we know how current works," Tommy interviews, and explains that the first thing they did was tie off their kayak to keep it from floating away, then worked together to put the nursery in place and weigh it down with a rock. Then it's just a matter of getting the tray of coral. I'm a little worried that the "rock" they're using is actually a chunk of the reef that used to be here.
Justin and Jennifer are heading out into the water with their completed rack, although it nearly tips off as soon as they leave the beach. Andy and Tommy are both underwater and working together to plant the coral, picking the pieces out of the conveniently buoyant tray. They get their thumbs-up from the guy in the scuba gear, and he hands them what looks like a compass and a bronze medallion strung together. The siblings are in place near another buoy, and they toss their rack overboard and Justin follows. Apparently Jennifer's going to wait in the boat. The snowboarders are rowing back much faster than they rowed out, given that they've offloaded their unwieldy cargo. Marcus is in the water, and so is his rack, but a piece came loose and he's having trouble swimming against the current to get it back. He interviews that he swims, but is not a competitive swimmer. And the tide appears to be a tough competitor. Jeremy and Sandy are debating whether their nursery is ready to go out in the water when Andy and Tommy zip back up onto the beach. Cathi and Bill are also setting sail. Back on land, Andy and Tommy now have to decode their clue. Phil explains to us that they're supposed to head north for thirteen minutes. Whether that's thirteen minutes in time or thirteen minutes of latitude he doesn't say, and given that a minute of latitude is about 1.15 miles, some racers are going to get confused if their boats don't go 69 miles per hour. In any case, this short journey will bring them to a spectacular pair of islands towering straight up out of the ocean. According to the subtitles it's known as Soap Island, but I can't seem to get corroboration on that from Google, at least not in the two minutes I'm willing to spend on such a project. The formation's profile just happens to match the cutouts on the medallion that came with the compass. Once they get there, the clue will be hanging from a rope stretched over a fishing boat that's docked in a low-ceilinged cove. Andy and Tommy are back on their boat, more decisively in first place than they've been since Indonesia, telling their pilot to take them north thirteen minutes. "People are gonna struggle with the current," Andy predicts. Indeed they are.
Back at Beach Preparation, the twins are still rifling through the storage shed while Cindy and Laurence work to arrange what their respective partners Ernie and Zac are hauling out. Laurence is taking no chances today, even confirming with Zac which notch the beach chairs are locked into. And one of the twins can't seem to even open her first chair, while locals at a nearby bar watch and laugh. Locals do love to watch and laugh at hapless Amazing Racers, don't they?
Out in the water, Jennifer and Justin are getting irritated with each other all over again as he keeps having to swim back and forth between the nursery and the drifting boat, while she expects him to hold onto the kayak. Finally she just gets bored with this nonsense and jumps into the water with the coral tray to help him load up the nursery, which works much better. They also catch a break in the form of their nursery fetching up against a rock so it doesn't drift any further. The task completed, they get back in their boat and snap at each other over the fact that they have to paddle over to the scuba diver who's holding their clue up out of the water. Meanwhile, Sandy ends up off her kayak, either accidentally or not, but it's safe to assume they didn't mean for their rack to start coming apart in the process. "We picked the wrong one," Sandy says. Jeremy tells her to stop complaining and joins her in the water, bringing the rack down with him in pieces. Even wearing a life vest, Sandy has already had enough of the choking waves, so they're headed back in. Bill and Cathi are having a similar experience, only with less snapping at each other, so he and Cathi are returning to land as well. Marcus's deteriorating nursery seems to be getting dragged out to sea, with him helpless to stop it, so he and Amani are just about done as well, especially when their kayak flips and dumps her in the drink. Paddling back, Sandy asks Jeremy if they should start over or switch, and he just yells, "I don't know!" Bill and Cathi are actually the first quitting team to land, and they head over to the other task, followed by Jeremy and Sandy, who appear to have made a decision. Amani and Marcus struggle to get back in their kayak and back onto land, where Marcus finally pants, "I've never been so tired and whipped, ever." So ocean kayaking and coral-planting is harder than professional football? Good to know. We leave them standing exhausted on the beach.
Back from ads, Marcus says that was one of the hardest things he ever tried to do, but Amani says it's okay and they head over to the beach shed. So out of five teams who attempted the coral task, only two succeeded. And one of them was lucky. Bill & Cathi find the storage shed as it's in the process of being ransacked, and Bill says, "This is gonna be a fine mess." They start sorting through the chairs that are spilling out onto the beach at this point. Also on the way over, Jeremy yells, "Sandy! Come here! Now!" She tells him not to talk to her that way, so he does it again. "I was shocked by that," she interviews. Well, Sandy, sometimes the race brings out the dickweed in people. Particularly in dickweeds. She offers to do the setting up while he pulls the chairs and umbrellas out. "I didn't really want to, but Sandy wanted to change to this," Jeremy complains to us as he starts tripping over chairs. And as if the current weren't enough to mess up this Detour, now the wind is getting into it, as beach umbrellas that were planted into the sand start blowing over. Liz & Marie get some more laughs from the locals while trying to put one up, and even more when another umbrella blows over and whacks one of them in the back of the head. Now the tears start. From the twins, not the locals. The locals are still laughing. But not hard enough to be crying. Yet.
Andy and Tommy have spotted the putative Soap Island on the horizon, and can't help but notice that the rocks' profile matches the cutouts on their medallion. They coast up to the small boat tied up in the cove and grab a clue hanging from one of the ropes overhead. It's a Road Block, and the question is, "Who wants to be the king of the hill?" That's a pretty clear indication of what kind of task it's going to be, right there. Phil talks up the limestone cliffs on Thailand's many islands, one of which a racer from each team will need to climb, until they reach a bird's nest full of clues. The cliff's practically vertical, but it's plenty rough, at least. And although it looks high from this angle, there'll be lots of cliff still above them once they reach the nest. But has anyone considered what will happen to those poor clues in the nest once the racers touch them? Their mother will never take them back.
Jennifer and Justin are also closing in on Soap Island. The medallion-as-clue thing prompts Justin to make some more movie references: "We're coming for you, One-Eyed Willie! Goonies never say die!" They get their clue in second place, and Jennifer sighs, "I guess I can climb." But what about her bad knee? Maybe that's not slowing her down much after all, at least not as much has her bad attitude.
Back at the beach task, Cindy's trying to carry water up the beach in her shirt, which works as well as you'd think, on the theory that moistening the sand around the umbrella pole will make it more dense and thus able to hold it up. It works better when Ernie takes his shirt off, soaks the whole thing in the ocean, and wrings it out on the sand. Plus the ladies get to see Ernie shirtless. Meanwhile, Amani is indulging Marcus and his latest repetitive catchphrase, "Goin' crazy." Apparently Marcus is a big catchphrase guy. Bill and Cathi have two chairs left to retrieve, while Liz and Marie are completely stumped by their umbrellas. They interview that yes, they were lifeguards, but putting up the umbrella and chairs at the beach was someone else's job. Someone they have a lot more respect for now. Now they tell us. Sandy comes over to help them plant one, because helping another team is probably preferable to being around Jeremy in his current mood. Sure enough, when she returns to him, he criticizes her for putting their chairs too close together. Then he solo-interviews that they can learn from their experiences and improve their relationship. This immediately after whining to us that he had to do the whole task by himself. Nice. During the task, Sandy asks him to not be mad at her and stay positive. I'm not sure "stay" is the right word.
Andy and Tommy's speedboat is approaching one of the larger small islands, and they're soon docked in a spot where they're staring straight up the vertical cliff face. This one is Andy's, and he starts scrambling right up, attached to a belaying rope lest any of these tasks approach being something remotely dangerous. He quickly makes it to the nest, and watching from below, Tommy says, "The eagle has left the nest." Andy rappels down, and the eagle has landed. Sorry. They're still in first place, and have yet to see another team approaching. Back on the boat, the clue is sending them to the Pit Stop: Koh Panyi, a two-hundred-year-old floating village that seems to be growing organically from the lee side of another one of those high, towering islands that sticks out of the ocean like a giant stone fin. Phil says it was built as a fishing village, and that there's a soccer field floating on the edge of it. That soccer field would be the Pit Stop for this leg. A floating soccer field sounds fun, but that thing could use a fence, or at least some kind of low railing. Otherwise I suspect most of the soccer in town is played with a wet ball. Of more immediate concern is that the last team to check in may be eliminated. That probably won't be the snowboarders, because they're on their way, still far ahead of anyone else.
Jennifer and Justin arrive at the rock-climbing island, and Jennifer heads up, thanking Justin for the encouragement he's calling out from the boat. She gets their clue in second place. Looking at the map that was included in the envelope, Justin shows the boat's pilot a northwesterly course from where they are to Koh Panyi, and they're on their way. Northwesterly. Remember that.
Back at the beach, Ernie and Cindy are the first team to finish Beach Preparation, which means they get their clue in third place. Amazing what a wet t-shirt can accomplish when properly deployed. With their compass and medallion and instructions to travel north thirteen minutes, they get back in their boat, and Ernie says north is "that way." It's hard to get one's bearings watching an unfamiliar setting on TV, but the rattling sound effect that gets dropped in here helpfully tells us he's wrong. Laurence and Zac also finish, receive their clue, and get on the boat. "North is directly in front of us," Laurence pronounces. Well, they're the sailors, they should know.
Meanwhile, Jeremy is pointing out the different notches on the beach chairs, which Sandy says don't matter. But then the judge gives them a thumbs-down, so I guess she was wrong. In the meantime, Amani and Marcus finish the task and get their clue in fifth place. Cathi tells an annoyed-looking Bill that they have to make their chairs look more like Team NFL's, while Liz and Marie are still battling to get more of their umbrellas planted. On their way past, Marcus advises them to twist the pole down into the sand. Sandy and Jeremy get their clue, prompting Cathi to tell Bill to hurry up. Getting on their boat, Jeremy asks Sandy where their clue is. "In your hand, honey, focus," she tells him. Which it is. "Okay, I'm positive," she adds before he can throw her earlier words back at her. Meanwhile, Andy and Tommy are already getting dropped off at Koh Panyi. They run through the village and follow the signs directing them in both Thai and English to the "floating stadium," a rather grandiose term for a slab of wood with lines painted on it. Phil is standing at center court to a bearded, snaggletoothed old fisherman in a straw hat. As Andy and Tommy arrive, Phil tells them, "You've done it again, you're team number one!" And they win five grand each, because sometimes that damn gnome just gets tired of shopping for prizes. Phil tells them they "smoked" the course, which is an interesting choice of words, and Tommy agrees that this is the clean first-place finish they wanted. In their post-leg interview, Andy praises God, and on the mat, he praises the old fisherman's long beard. Andy seems like a very positive guy. But then it's hard not to be in a good mood after winning three legs in a row, even if the first two were partly the result of other teams' mistakes.
Jennifer and Justin arrive at the village, and she spots the first sign directing them to the floating stadium, even though it's mostly hidden behind a birdcage. Clearly her eyes are as sharp as her tongue. They quickly find Phil, and are happy to hear they're team number two, although Jennifer claims it's been a rough day. "My measure of how rough it is," Phil says, "is whether you use your look." He asks Jennifer to deploy it, and she obligingly pulls a stone-cold bitchface, right on cue. Phil shows her his own, which is mostly eyebrow. "It takes practice, you'll get it," Jennifer encourages. Phil's thinking that probably would have been handy with Jonathan.
Ernie and Cindy are out on their boat, and Ernie says they're looking for something that matches the symbol on their medallion. There's a shot of a hand holding up the medallion to the horizon, with its exact match off in the distance right to it in a way that seems impossible to miss. But I'm not buying that it's Ernie holding it, for reasons that will become apparent later. They spot some yellow canisters floating out in the water, but wisely pass them by rather than pulling up and hauling them out to search for clues.
However, Laurence and Zac have already arrived at Soap Island and retrieved their clue. Zac agrees to do the climbing Road Block.
Back at the beach, the wind is kicking up some more, blowing over the twins' umbrellas yet again. But Bill and Cathi's stay up, so they've finished the Detour in seventh place. Cathi gives the girls encouragement as they leave them to it, and suggests digging with a shell or something. So that's three teams who have helped Liz and Marie with "their" Detour. One of the twins reminds her weeping sister, "It's the beach. It's fun." Heh.
Ernie and Cindy are still zooming aimlessly across the ocean, looking for a race flag like it's going to be out in the middle of the water somewhere. Marcus and Amani are already at Soap Island, and Amani is agreeing to be king of the hill. Because, you might recall, Marcus hates heights. So does Laurence, as he says he's glad Zac's doing this when they get their first look at the cliff he's going to have to climb. Laurence admits that he gets vertigo even on level ground. Ernie and Cindy are still lost, but at least they've stopped, so they aren't speeding in the wrong direction any more. Jeremy and Sandy, now in fifth place, get the clue from where Ernie and Cindy are still trying to get to. Jeremy's going to be doing the climbing. The twins bicker about planting (or re-planting, more likely) another umbrella. Ernie and Cindy spot a boat with flags on it and go closer, only to find that they're not race flags. We leave them adrift in the middle of the ocean, in what Cindy calls "the middle of nowhere," like it's only a matter of time before they have to start eating each other.
After the ads, Ernie spots the tall islands in the distance, and as they head in that direction, he sheepishly explains that he misread the compass and they were actually heading south. Which was a key plot point in the Dave Barry novel Tricky Business, but I'm not sure how it fits in with what we've seen of Ernie and Cindy's boat ride. I guess they're lucky they didn't end up back in Indonesia.
Liz and Marie are realizing that their chairs have to be moved. One of them (I assume Marie) screams at the other (I assume Liz) to start moving them. "We've been out here for like three hours!" Then they argue about whether it's better to yell or be nonchalant. My vote is that it's better to move the damn chairs.
Zac has retrieved the clue and is back in the boat with Laurence, and they use the map to plot their course to the Pit Stop. Oddly, though, the route Zac traces due west across the map is completely different from Jennifer and Justin's. Now, Zac has circumnavigated the globe, so he should know what he's doing here. But we know Justin and Jennifer got it right because they're already there. Yet Laurence interviews that what with Zac having sailed around the world, "We know how to plot a rhumb line. That's basic navigation." Okay, if he says so, but I had to look that term up and I'm still not sure I got it right, so maybe they're making this unnecessarily complicated. And then Zac tells the pilot they're going northeast, even though we just saw him decide to go west and the siblings clearly went northwest. Okay, it's impressive that Zac sailed around the world at such a young age. But it's less impressive if, as I'm beginning to suspect, he didn't mean to.
Ernie and Cindy have finally made it to the clue clothesline at Soap Island in sixth place, and he'll be doing the climbing. Back at the beach, the twins are finishing up and talking about how they need a new motto: "Pay attention to detail. It's screwed us over every time." Attention to detail seems like it would be important to identical twins who might want other people to be able to tell them apart. But they finally finish and get their clue, and one of them chokes up a little, although she pissily denies it when her sister asks if she's crying. "We already cried, I don't want to do that any more," the other one says. They get on their boat to head thirteen minutes north instead.
"It appears we gotta do a little rock climbing," Marcus says, by which he means Amani is going to do a little rock climbing. She doesn't seem too happy about it, either. She's getting strapped into her harness when Jeremy and Sandy arrive. She climbs up ahead of Jeremy and retrieves the clue, with Jeremy gaining on her. She gets back down and returns to the boat so she and Marcus can get to the Pit Stop. Jeremy soon gets his clue, and Sandy says she's proud of him. She's rather confused when Ernie and Cindy show up, seeing as how Team Control left the Detour before they did. "What happened?" Sandy asks Cindy across the water as Ernie scrambles to the climbing guides. Cindy explains how they pointed their boat the wrong way, and Sandy assures her that there are still two teams behind them, so they're good. Jeremy rejoins Sandy, and they're off to the Pit Stop in fifth place. Ernie is on his way up the cliff, and Cindy tells us, "We practiced rock climbing before we got here, so I know he's got it." Of course they did. At this point I'm actually looking forward to the first eating challenge, just so we can hear about how she and Jeremy practiced consuming large quantities of gross food.
Bill & Cathi get their clue from Soap Island, and Bill's taking this one. Meanwhile, Zac and Laurence have stopped their boat and are drifting somewhere out in the middle of the sea. Laurence interview-excuses that they're used to using marine charts, so either the map or the compass was off. Either way, they're lost. Well, that's just embarrassing. This is like Andy & Tommy failing a snowboarding task, or Marcus messing up a tackling Road Block, or Justin and Jennifer getting stuck on an arguing Detour.
Ernie gets his clue pretty quickly, and he and Cindy take off in their boat in sixth place. Meanwhile, Liz and Marie become the last team to get a clue off the Soap Island clothesline. Bill's already on his way up the cliff, and Cathi explains their Road Block strategy: he might as well take them all, since they're not going to last long anyway. Although she doesn't use those exact words. "Like the view I have!" she calls up to Bill's butt. "Aw, you old lady," he mock-grumps back. She's amazed at how quickly he gets the clue, and hopes they can be out of there before the twins show up. As they sail off in seventh place, Bill says he might take up rock climbing. If only to keep treating Cathi to the view.
Zac and Laurence are trying to get their bearings, when fortunately another team's speedboat goes past in the distance. "What a bunch of useless sailors we are," Laurence says as they follow it. No argument here.
Team NFL's boat is approaching the floating village, and Marcus is hoping to get a fourth-place finish (and some applause) at the floating stadium. Which is funny, not just because the "stadium" is totally devoid of bleachers, let alone an audience, but also because they're actually in third. Of course Marcus has no way of knowing what happened to Ernie and Cindy. Amani and Marcus are the to dock, but Jeremy and Sandy are right behind them. "Eyes open, babe, because you're really observant," Amani tells Marcus as they begin wandering through the labyrinthine docks and passages of the village. The first thing they see is a school, so they check there, figuring that's the most likely spot for a stadium. Meanwhile, Jeremy and Sandy have spotted an actual sign pointing them in the right direction. Or at least Jeremy has. They must have been the team Zac and Laurence followed here, because Wrong-Way Feldman and Wrong-Way Feldboy are docking as well, and soon spot the trail of signs. Glad to see they can navigate on land, at least. Amani and Marcus are reduced to wandering aimlessly as Jeremy runs to the floating soccer field, yelling at Sandy behind him to sprint. Phil tells them they're team number three. They high-ten like the passionate lovers they are, and do separate interviews about how they need to work on their relationship. Yeah, to extend Jeremy's used-car metaphor from the season premiere, I think the diagnostic printout from the guy at the shop is getting longer. On the mat, Phil tells them to look behind them, as Zac and Laurence arrive in fourth place. Congratulations to Team Adventure for having the sailing experience and navigational know-how to figure out that they needed to follow the Bickersons to the right island.
Ernie and Cindy have also landed, and Ernie quickly finds the signs while Amani and Marcus are still lost in the village. In fact ,Team Control ends up as team number five, which means that Amani and Marcus, who arrived at the island in third place, check in as team number six. That must sting.
Marie quickly gets the clue out of the bird's nest, making her the last person to show us that the task is easier than the editors are trying to make it seem. Back on the boat, they assume they're on their way to their Philimination. "But look at this scenery. People dream of seeing stuff like this." "It's like riding to our death," one of them says. Well, at least their dad will be happy to see them.
Bill and Cathi walk up to the mat, and are team number seven. Again. Phil asks if that's their lucky number. "It must be, but it better change tomorrow," Cathi quips.
Finally, Liz and Marie get to the mat, and are welcomed to Phuket. Phil tells them they're the last team to arrive, and they aren't exactly surprised, saying they haven't seen another team for hours. Phil asks them if they're glad they came on the race, and of course they're happy about the experience, if not its end. "It's really sad," one of them says, because they've failed to notice that Phil has yet to actually Philiminate them. And sure enough, he tells them it's their lucky day, because it's a non-elimination leg. Sure, they'll have a Speed Bump in the leg, but that's rarely a problem for anyone anymore. They interview about it not being over until it's over, and they have the leg to make up time and "prove that we deserve to be here." "It's not as easy as it looks," one of them tells Phil. Well, to be fair, I don't think they make it look easy at all.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter, or just e-mail him at M.Giant[at]gmail.com.
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