JK and Mike were by far the weakest team so far and they knew it - they had flirted with elimination so many times before in this race so everyone was shocked when they came in first in Vigan. They caused an upset by stunning everyone of course, but this is hardly the first time it has happened in TAR history. Quite a few instances come to mind, but one of the most memorable was in TAR US S6 E6/8, Lori and Bolo had fallen about 8.5 hours behind everyone else after having missed the last train of the day to Budapest after having had a nightmare of a day at Eger. However, they managed to catch up with the rest of the teams at the Budapest Heritage Rail museum because of the confounded "hours of operation". So when the museum finally opened, there was a mad dash to a board where teams had to grab a number to determine what order they could do the next task and Bolo got there first. This led to Lori and Bolo getting the next clue first - which included the fast forwarded which they did (a surprisingly easy fast forward, compared to what happened on this season of TARA) and they bounced from last to first: winning that leg when even they thought just the night before that elimination was inevitable.
Is this just bad planning on the part of the TAR producers?
Staying with the case of Lori and Bolo winning that leg in Hungary, it was clearly a case of bad planning - they could have simply did what was done at the zip wire in the Ilocos Sur Adventure Zone: when the teams arrive, they get a number, first come first serve. That would ensure that even if the teams encountered one of those 'hours of operations' bottleneck situations, there is still an element of 'fairness' that the teams who got to the location first would still have some kind of advantage, even if it is a minor one. Viewers and fans of TAR want an element of fairness when it comes to the outcome of the race, we don't want luck to play too much a role here, we do want to see the best teams get rewarded for their skill and strategy. It can be so frustrating for us if the 'wrong' team wins with dumb luck.
Grab was once again featured when the teams were in Manila - but unlike the fiasco in Java which caused Alphaeus and Brandon to be eliminated from the race, most people didn't even notice the fact that there was a product placement. I guess that's better than what happened in Bandung when poor Alphaeus and Brandon got hopelessly lost whilst in a Grab taxi after leaving the detour. Like I said before, whether or not you can blame the taxi driver is a matter for debate of course, but that sure isn't good publicity for Grab either way.
Nagsasalita ba kayo ng Ingles?
The two Filipino teams raced ahead in Quiapo market, but having consulted with some local experts, they confirmed that it was not really a huge advantage to be able to speak Tagalog in that situation as many of the locals will speak English - with a total of 186 local languages in the Philippines, Tagalog is the local lingua franca but English is the second language that practical all Filipinos have learnt at school. Quiapo market however, is huge and quite chaotic, so the two Filipino teams probably benefited from the fact that they would have understood how the markets worked, where to find the items on the list, how to ask for help since the language barrier wouldn't have been that huge. I also noted that none of the non-Filipino teams made any effort to speak Tagalog at all, which was rather disappointing!
Good grief. Just how rude was JK in Quiapo market? He kept shouting at the vendors despite Mike having told him to calm down several times. Even if you are in a country where the locals don't speak any English, what good would shouting at them in English do? They are not deaf, they just don't speak the same language. It is an incredibly dumb thing to do - credit to Mike for berating JK for it. Good grief, how does someone with such poor social skills get to be a DJ without offending hundreds, thousands of listeners on a daily basis? JK has already irritated, offended and irked so many on this race. The sensible thing to have done if you found yourself in such a situation would be to find a helpful local who can speak English to help you and the fact that you have a camera crew filming everything would help you find some helpful locals easily. After all, loads of people would love to be on TV, especially on TAR!
10 to 12 hours by bus? Damn that's a long ride.
The overnight bus ride to Vigan took 10 - 12 hours - most tourists would prefer to fly to nearby Laoag (a domestic flight that takes 70 minutes). Why weren't the contestants allowed to choose their own mode of transport? In TARA S4 E5, when the teams had to make their way from Manila to Legazpi, 6 of the 8 teams chose to take a bus to Legazpi whilst 2 teams gambled to take a domestic flight the next day. In any case, when Tom and Anita were only team on the later bus, why didn't they run around the bus station begging people to swap their tickets for the earlier bus? After all, Treasuri and Louisa did just that when they managed to swap their tickets for an earlier train in KL during E3.Why didn't Tom and Anita even try to ask around the bus station? Were they so exhausted at that stage they just gave up?
This was clearly a hard challenge - one had to figure out the trajectory of the flour bomb, whilst keeping very calm as you fly towards the target zone at great speed. In fact, this zip wire roadblock is similar to the one done in Juneau TAR US E12 when they had to hit a target from a small bush plane. Treasuri's superior brain power worked out how it should be done faster than anyone else and credit to her for finishing it faster than everyone else. I like TAR challenges which involve an element of strategy and skill rather than sheer brute strength.
Don't you know what karaoke is?
I was surprised just how many racers didn't get what karaoke is? You don't have to memorize the lyrics, they are on the screen! Same thing that happened in Vietnam during TAR Canada S4 E4 when everyone was so afraid of the Karaoke challenge (singing 'Shine Your Line') but it turned out to be really quite easy as the lyrics were on the screen. Even Parul and Maggie balked at the karaoke challenge despite being local. Yes the local dialect was very different from Tagalog, but ironically, as long as it was phonetically straight forward and didn't have any hard words to pronounce, then it really wasn't that hard - JK and Mike got through with only two attempts whilst Eric's poor performance made locals Eric and Rona struggle, taking a total of four attempts to get through the same roadblock.
Perfect sausages but somewhat out of tune folk songs?
It became increasingly clear that the two roadblocks were not equally hard - those who did the karaoke challenge found it much easier (finishing 1st, 2nd, 4th) whilst those who did the sausages finished 3rd, 5th, 6th. Painfully for Treasuri and Louisa, they got to the roadblock first but crumbled under the pressure of having to make 15 high quality, perfect sausages and finished 5th. Does it seem fair? Probably not - but part of TAR is being able to identify which detour challenge is going to be the easier one and usually Treasuri and Louisa make very good decisions on that front - it's just a shock to see them make a poor decision on this occasion. Certainly the karaoke judge didn't seem particularly strict with some of the contestants who didn't sing particularly well.
The writing was on the wall for Tom and Anita
I knew Tom and Anita were crumbling under the stress and beginning to self-destruct during this episode. When both Anita and Rona were the last two stuck at the zip wire challenge, Eric remained very calm and supportive - he knew how to support Rona and when to keep quiet if necessary. Well, I suppose that's what marriage is all about! Tom was particularly caustic and nasty towards Anita during the sausage challenge (ouch!) and towards the end, it seemed like he just left her to complete the challenge after he realized they were probably last already. We have seen this before from Rachel and Vicky in previous legs: giving up on themselves when they sensed that elimination is imminent. I know this may come across rather judgmental and mean, I do hope Anita will watch this episode and question whether or not Tom is the right man for her or if she would prefer someone more understanding and supportive like Eric. All I can say is that Rona is a very lucky woman - whether or not they win TARA, she already has a far better prize in Eric Tai.
Absolutely no home ground advantage to the Pinoys in the Philippines.
I had expected Eric and Rona or Parul and Maggie to have done well in this leg, but they limped in at 3rd and 4th, finishing behind teams from Singapore and Malaysia. Perhaps it is to the credit of the producers that the challenges were designed such that no team should have a huge home ground advantage. So far none of the legs have been won by teams from that country. The two Indonesian legs were won by Malaysian teams, Treasuri and Lousia from Indonesia then triumphed in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and team Singapore JK and Mike delivered a shocking victory in the Philippines. By that token, it's anyone's game in the next episode when the race continues in Singapore.
It became increasingly clear that the two roadblocks were not equally hard - those who did the karaoke challenge found it much easier (finishing 1st, 2nd, 4th) whilst those who did the sausages finished 3rd, 5th, 6th. Painfully for Treasuri and Louisa, they got to the roadblock first but crumbled under the pressure of having to make 15 high quality, perfect sausages and finished 5th. Does it seem fair? Probably not - but part of TAR is being able to identify which detour challenge is going to be the easier one and usually Treasuri and Louisa make very good decisions on that front - it's just a shock to see them make a poor decision on this occasion. Certainly the karaoke judge didn't seem particularly strict with some of the contestants who didn't sing particularly well.
The writing was on the wall for Tom and Anita
I knew Tom and Anita were crumbling under the stress and beginning to self-destruct during this episode. When both Anita and Rona were the last two stuck at the zip wire challenge, Eric remained very calm and supportive - he knew how to support Rona and when to keep quiet if necessary. Well, I suppose that's what marriage is all about! Tom was particularly caustic and nasty towards Anita during the sausage challenge (ouch!) and towards the end, it seemed like he just left her to complete the challenge after he realized they were probably last already. We have seen this before from Rachel and Vicky in previous legs: giving up on themselves when they sensed that elimination is imminent. I know this may come across rather judgmental and mean, I do hope Anita will watch this episode and question whether or not Tom is the right man for her or if she would prefer someone more understanding and supportive like Eric. All I can say is that Rona is a very lucky woman - whether or not they win TARA, she already has a far better prize in Eric Tai.
I had expected Eric and Rona or Parul and Maggie to have done well in this leg, but they limped in at 3rd and 4th, finishing behind teams from Singapore and Malaysia. Perhaps it is to the credit of the producers that the challenges were designed such that no team should have a huge home ground advantage. So far none of the legs have been won by teams from that country. The two Indonesian legs were won by Malaysian teams, Treasuri and Lousia from Indonesia then triumphed in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and team Singapore JK and Mike delivered a shocking victory in the Philippines. By that token, it's anyone's game in the next episode when the race continues in Singapore.
Time for some statistics! Average positions thus far:
Treasuri and Louisa 2.17
Yvonne and Chloe 3.67
Eric and Rona 4.17
Parul and Maggie 4.67
JK and Mike 5.17
So despite their shock win in the Philippines, JK and Mike are still statistically the worst team. Actually statistically, little has changed in that list above (well, apart from saying goodbye to Tom and Anita).The next leg will take them to Singapore where JK and Mike will have a small degree of home ground advantage. But being from Singapore, I can tell you that this home ground advantage is minimal as English is very widely spoken so there's no language barrier (unlike some of the other places visited so far like Indonesia, Thailand and especially Vietnam) and it is very easy to navigate your way around the city. So it will depend more on the kinds of challenges that await them in Singapore.
Will an all female team win TARA S5?
Treasuri and Louisa may have had a bad day in the office in this leg, but they did zip out of the zip wire challenge in first place but made a bad decision when it came to the detour. I say they are still the favourite. Yvonne and Chloe may have had a terrible start, but if you were to ignore their 9th place finish in Bogor, their average position is a very credible 2.6 which puts them a lot closer to their closest rivals Treasuri and Louisa. The winners of TARA S5 may well be an all-female team, but which one will it be? There has been a precedent for all-female teams winning TARA S1 when Zabrina and Joe Jer won it for Malaysia. But what about my favourites Eric and Rona? I still have faith in them being the outsiders who could still challenge the top two teams and win this. But if anything this leg has taught us is that statistics could have never predicted JK and Mike's win in the Philippines - nor could it have predictable Treasuri and Louisa's rather poor showing there. It goes to show, anything can happen on TAR.
Treasuri and Louisa may have had a bad day in the office in this leg, but they did zip out of the zip wire challenge in first place but made a bad decision when it came to the detour. I say they are still the favourite. Yvonne and Chloe may have had a terrible start, but if you were to ignore their 9th place finish in Bogor, their average position is a very credible 2.6 which puts them a lot closer to their closest rivals Treasuri and Louisa. The winners of TARA S5 may well be an all-female team, but which one will it be? There has been a precedent for all-female teams winning TARA S1 when Zabrina and Joe Jer won it for Malaysia. But what about my favourites Eric and Rona? I still have faith in them being the outsiders who could still challenge the top two teams and win this. But if anything this leg has taught us is that statistics could have never predicted JK and Mike's win in the Philippines - nor could it have predictable Treasuri and Louisa's rather poor showing there. It goes to show, anything can happen on TAR.
Another non-elimination leg coming up!
I have been counting - there are four episode left and there are still five teams. The finals will involve three teams racing, so they can only two teams in three episodes: that means we have a non-elimination leg coming up. But which one is it? The last non-elimination leg was in Penang (episode 3), where Rachel and Vicky were given a second chance despite having ran a disastrous leg. It cannot and will not be in episode 9 (the penultimate episode) as the producers will want the drama of us viewers finding out who will be the final three teams to race to the finish line. So it will have to be either in episode 7 or 8. I am guessing that the next non-elimination leg will be in Singapore simply because they still have so many more episodes and it will be more interesting to keep more teams in for as long as possible. But that's just me trying to be logical, let's see what the producers have in mind for the teams in Singapore.
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