Chomrabsuor, anak sok sabay te? Oh the last few minutes of this episode certainly had us all on the edges of our seats and I must say, I was quite disappointed with the outcome when Eswar & Arpana were finally eliminated despite Eswar's valiant efforts. There so much to get into, but as always let's start with the statistics and see how the teams line up after this latest leg in Siem Reap. The teams traveled via Bangkok to Siem Reap as there are no direct flights from Hyderabad to Siem Reap - there is a direct flight from Hyderabad to Bangkok and from there, there is many flights to Siem Reap. This would have been the most direct and obvious route for them to take and we could see that the teams were on thr very short Bangkok Airways flight from Bangkok which takes only about an hour. But may I just say that I did predict accurately the outcome in my post last week about which team would win in leg 10 and which team would be eliminated.
Average ranking after leg 10 in Siem Reap, Cambodia
- Riley & Maddison 2.33
- Hung & Chee 2.77
- Will & James 2.77
- DeAngelo & Gary 4.55
- Eswar & Arpana 5.44 (eliminated in Siem Reap)
Riley & Maddison have clearly established themselves as the favourites to win this season, whilst Hung & Chee are tied for second place with Will & James at this stage, but it is not good enough to be consistent and settle for second or third place - at this stage, we're looking for a team that can win under pressure. Both Riley & Maddison and Will & James have won three legs each, whilst Hung & Chee have only won two - well they could have won leg 6 in Berlin but Hung foolishly threw that away. Even problems with their boat on the Tonle Sap lake couldn't prevent Riley & Maddison from winning this leg but they managed to finish ahead of Will & James, winning two legs in a row after their victory in the previous leg in Hyderabad. But alas, Eswar & Arpana never recovered from a slow start - when they Psah Chas, they spent ages looking for the tuk-tuk and were the last team to locate it after having ran in the wrong direction. So that eliminated any chance of them getting to the U-turn board first after having wasted so much time doing something that took the teams a few minutes at most. For a while, it looked like DeAngelo & Gary were doomed, the "final 3" alliance had agreed to not just U-turn DeAngelo & Gary but they burned the U-turn by U-turning a team that was already ahead, making sure that Eswar & Arpana were the only team that had to do both sides of the detour - it sounded like a great plan until DeAngelo & Gary managed to get to the U-turn board ahead of everyone else and so this was not something the "final 3" alliance had envisioned would happened especially since DeAngelo & Gary were the 4th team to get to the lake's floating temple.
Let's analyze the double U-turn.
Despite finishing the detour in second place, DeAngelo & Gary managed to overtake Riley & Maddison in getting to the U-turn board because Riley & Maddison ran around that floating restaurant aimlessly. So at that stage, what were their choices? They knew that Riley & Maddison were right behind them, they also saw Eswar & Arpana also attempting the same detour however, they had no idea where the two other teams who attempted the other side of the detour were - they could be way ahead or they could have been behind (well we know they were behind, but there was no way for DeAngelo & Gary to tell at that stage). What should they have done? It turns out they had done the right thing - it was too much of a gamble to U-turn a team that could be ahead of you, so they had to either U-turn Riley & Maddison or Eswar & Arpana. But I would have argued that it would have been a good strategy to U-turn Riley & Maddison because they were the strongest team at that stage of the race. If I had the chance to get rid of the strongest team in the race and take the weakest team with me into the penultimate leg, then that would not only increase my chances of getting into the finals but also my chances of winning if I didn't have to race against a superior team. Hence it seemed tactically foolish to pass up on that opportunity to U-turn a stronger team: why didn't they do that? Did they think that Riley & Maddison would simply complete the other side of the detour and perhaps finish third or fourth instead of winning the leg? Or did they foresee themselves struggling in the next part of the leg (oh what prophecy) and needed that cushion to survive this leg? Thus either by accident or by design - DeAngelo & Gary did make the right decision after all and that has served them so well.
Are you focused on survival or winning?
But surely they have secured their survival and their ticket to Manila where the next leg will be run, but surely the conclusion would be that they would simply be eliminated in Manila and not make it to the finals, since they're statistically so much weaker than all the other teams? The "final 3" alliance had no qualms about throwing Eswar & Arpana under the bus because they were determined to control the outcome of the race by making sure they kept DeAngelo & Gary as well as Eswar & Arpana out of the finals - they are going into this next leg in a very precarious position where the other three teams are ganging up against them. Thus an alternative strategy that I would have tried in this case would have been to U-turn Riley & Maddison, in the hope that they would fall to last place and get eliminated in Siem Reap (and thus take Eswar & Arpana to the next leg) - then I would have approached Hung & Chee and said, "let's gang up against Will & James, they have won three legs and are the strongest team left - let's make sure they do not reach the finals, we'll do everything we can to work together in order to make sure the three teams in the finals do not include Will & James. Do you want to win the Amazing Race or do you want to watch Will & James win this whilst you clap for them and pretend to smile?" Instead, they have done nothing to challenge the status quo and focused on survival rather than actually winning the season. They have won one leg before and they did it by exploiting another team (well, Hung in particular) in Berlin, if they were capable of being very strategic back in Berlin - why were they unable to think strategically in Siem Reap then?
The other glaring error.
Out of a sense of loyalty to Hung & Chee and Will & James, Riley & Maddison made the decision to burn the U-turn by U-turning DeAngelo & Gary. Again - they were not being strategic. Why would they want to take the two strongest teams with them into the final leg? Surely this was their chance to get rid of one of these two very strong teams and help Eswar & Arpana reach the finals with them? I know why they did it of course - they have sworn loyalty to this alliance, but nonetheless it still doesn't make it a good decision. Just because you know why someone made a decision doesn't mean that it is necessarily a wise or good decision; fans of the show must stop putting racers on pedestals and acknowledge that racers can make stupid, foolish and silly decisions - they're not perfect, they do make dumb mistakes and yes, some very poor decisions. Alliances are meant to help give you an advantage in the game - this alliance is not giving Riley & Maddison any advantage whatsoever. The other alternative would have been simply to choose not to yield and let the remaining teams fight it out. Like I said previously, Riley & Maddison are acting as if they are so confident that they are acting as if they just want to take their new best friends along for this wonderful adventure and they are not even threatened by these two other strong teams - I think this attitude would come back and haunt them in the next two legs.
This is the third visit by TAR US to Cambodia.
TAR US has visited Cambodia twice before in S13 E5 when they did visit Siem Reap and did many similar tasks on the same lake; and then in S15 E4 when they went instead to the capital Phnom Penh. So it has been a good 11 years since TAR US has visited Cambodia as S15 was way back in 2009 which feels like an incredibly long time ago. Siem Reap is only the fifth most populous city in Cambodia but most tourists only go to Siem Reap because Angkor Wat is there and it is the number one tourist attraction in Cambodia. Fewer tourists go to Phnom Penh despite the fact that it is the capital city and the biggest city in the country, there's plenty to see and do in Phnom Penh for the tourists who do make it there but you can literally spend days just exploring Angkor Wat and since there are international flights that go directly to Siem Reap airport, many tourists never get out of the Siem Reap area. Cambodia is indeed a stunningly beautiful country that has been ravaged by decades of civil war, genocide and foreign occupation - so if you don't know much about that very dark chapter of Cambodia's history then I recommend watching the classic film 'The Killing Fields' about Pol Pot's horror.
Life on Tonle Sap lake
I enjoyed the way we were treated to an insight about what life was like for the people who live on the lake - some have houses built on stilts to withstand the flooding in the lake whilst others live on house boats permanently. This is because Tonle Sap is a freshwater lake that is in the lower Mekong delta, the level of the lake varies with the seasons; when the monsoon rains arrive, the water levels of the lake rises dramatically before falling during the dry season. There is a lot of fishing done in the lake but another reason why life on the lake is safer is because of the large number of landmines and unexploded bombs left in the Cambodian countryside after decades of war - it is estimated that there are four to six million pieces of unexploded in Cambodia and ten million mines. Many Cambodian farmers have been killed or maimed when they work their fields and stumble upon an explosive device - this has rendered huge swathes of the Cambodian countryside simply too unsafe for farming and thus people have turned to the relative safety of living on the lake. That is why they have come up with innovative methods to grow fruit and vegetables on the lake on these floating farms - this is quite a difficult method to grow fruit and vegetables, but when the land is simply too dangerous for farming, then this is the best option. Of course, this is a long and grim story that Phil had simply no time to go into when talking about this side of the detour, but I thought I would cover it for my readers as I find this story both sad and interesting at the same time; such is the nature of a war-torn country like Cambodia - one must understand what this country has gone through.
Not that it matters, but I love Hung & Chee.
Did any of you notice how Hung & Chee made the effort to speak to their tuk-tuk driver (his name is Spider!) in a friendly manner? That was so refreshing to see, whilst all the other teams were just yelling rudely at their driver, at least Hung & Chee made the effort to be polite, even if they didn't speak any Cambodian. By the way, in case you're wondering, Hung is of Vietnamese ethnicity and Chee is of Chinese ethnicity - so even if Hung spoke Vietnamese and Chee spoke say Mandarin and/or Cantonese (or any of the other Chinese dialects), neither language would have been much use in Cambodia as Cambodian is from a totally different language family - so it is quite similar to the situation we had in the last leg when Eswar & Arpana ended up speaking English in Hyderabad. The national language of Cambodia is Cambodian (also known as Khmer) but there are 19 other minority and foreign languages spoken in Cambodia and the population of Cambodia is just 15.2 million. I didn't hear any of the racers even try to speak any Cambodian on this leg which isn't surprising but nonetheless somewhat disappointing - they could have tried. Mind you, would it have been fair to send the teams to somewhere like Vietnam where three racers (Michelle & Victoria as well as Hung) would have a distinct advantage in being able to speak the local language? That would be like back in S14 E9 + E10 when Tammy & Victor ran two legs in China and of course, they spoke Mandarin fluently - they went on to win that season. Mind you, LaVonne spoke Spanish fluently and it didn't help her at all in Colombia in E2 when Kellie & LaVonne got eliminated after getting the worst possible taxi driver in Bogota who got hopelessly lost. Hence speaking the local language is a huge advantage of course - but there are so many other factors at play as well, that would determine the outcome of each leg.
Was this a well-constructed leg?
I don't think so - there was a major flaw in this leg. When the teams arrived at the floating temple, there was a traffic jam when teams were made to go into the temple one at a time and they couldn't rush - what was the point of that then? The teams had become separated after they had left the airport in Siem Reap, having a bottle neck like that is really stupid. Yes I get it you want to show the viewers a floating temple in the lake, that's rare and uniquely Cambodian. They could have allowed teams to simply pick up a clue there without having to do any kind of offering ceremony with the monks there, or at least if you really wanted to involve the monks - then make them learn the steps to some kind of ritual that is so complex (hey, Riley & Maddison were rehearsing in the boat) that it would completely mix up the order the teams leave the temple. We had already seen the production team mess up last week by having one side of a detour (the disgusting dentures detour) where only one team could attempt the detour at the time, hugely disadvantaging Hung & Chee whilst teams who did the other side of the detour (the bangles) didn't face that issue at all. The rest of the tasks were pretty okay, showcasing life on the Tonle Sap lake, some French-Cambodian culture in the roadblock and a really charming pit stop in Angkor Wat. So apart from that mistake at the temple, the rest of the leg was good - so on balance, it was just average. There are really no excuses for mistakes like this on the part of the production team - do your job guys!
Was I surprised with the outcome?
Well yes and no. On one hand, yes the statistics never lie - that is why I always say, put aside your emotions and simply look at the statistics. The strongest team is most likely to win and the weakest team is most likely to be eliminated and that's exactly what has happened this time round which makes it really quite predictable. What saved this episode was the drama provided by DeAngelo when he took so long completing the tile-making roadblock that he nearly allowed Eswar to catch up with him - that was very tense and that is the kind of drama that makes an episode exciting to watch.
How come so many teams choked on the roadblock?
I was amazed at how so many of the teams took so long with the tile-making roadblock when all it came down to was watching the demonstration carefully again in order to make sure you have noted every single step. The key step the racers missed was to add the waxy/greasy substance to make sure the tile didn't stick to the mould, so it would come out of the mould easily after the pressing process. Ironically Eswar was the fastest of them all but alas he still couldn't catch up after the U-turn. You would like to think that the teams would be a lot wiser after having run so many legs of the race already but I'd like to remind you that they are probably exhausted, extremely sleep deprived, hungry and in this leg, suffering from the tropical heat in Cambodia as well and that was probably why they weren't thinking straight. I remember how Floyd of Becca & Floyd (aka team Fun) succumbed to heatstroke in Vietnam back in TAR S29 E10 leading to their elimination - that is how brutal it can be to run a leg in these tropical countries, where the weather is very hot and humid.
Hung & Chee missed an opportunity.
Hung & Chee didn't get the chance to use the U-turn, but when Chee finally completed his roadblock, he had the chance to tell Eswar what needed to be done in order to save Eswar - that would have been the perfect way to punish DeAngelo for what he did back in Berlin on leg 6, but instead, they just ran out of that factory without trying to manipulate the result, leaving the last two teams to battle it out. This is why I worry about Hung & Chee - I like them, I want them to reach the finals, I want them to final the season but they are simply not strategic enough to take advantage of situations like that when they present themselves to decide which team they want to eliminate. This was the whole reason why Leo & Alana helped Kaylynn & Haley back in leg 2 in Bogota, Colombia - because they wanted to eliminate the Olympic athletes Kellie & LaVonne. Between those two teams left, I would definitely help the weaker team and get rid of the stronger of the two - but Hung & Chee didn't even think about trying to do anything like that, as that is simply not in their nature to do so.
Who will win the next leg in Manila and who will be eliminated next?
Given that we're now following a very predictable pattern with few surprises in this season, it will probably be Riley & Maddison winning again and we'll finally say goodbye to DeAngelo & Gary - putting my personal feelings aside, they have actually done very well and have really exceeding my expectations. I honestly did not expect to see them last so long in the process, doing much better than teams like Victoria & Michelle and Leo & Alana whom I thought had a good shot at making it to the finals. They do remind me of TAR Asia S5 when JK & Mike flirted with elimination in the first five legs of that season, only to then completely change their fortunes and win legs 6 and 7, before being eliminated in leg 8. JK & Mike really exceeded my expectations as I thought they were such a weak team they would be eliminated in the first few legs, but then they did manage to run 8 out of the 10 legs in that season. Thus I must say, I did feel the same way about DeAngelo & Gary after the first leg in Tobago but here we are after ten legs and they are still going strong.
Finally, let me answer a really dumb question.
I came across this dumb question on social media saying how Will & James are disliked by many people on social media because they came across as manipulative and many have hoped that Will & James won't win as a result. Some also questioned if it would this negative reaction on social media affect the way future racers behave on TAR? The answer is no - what you guys think or do on social media doesn't matter, nobody gives a damn whether you like this team or hate another team. You opinion doesn't change the outcome of this season's race which I remind you, was filmed a good two years ago. It's like watching the 1984 Olympics men's basketball final between Spain and the USA and saying, "I hope America wins, I like the American team." Of course we know that the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics took place 36 years ago and we all know the outcome of that match, but it is so ridiculous that some idiots on social media think that their opinion is so important that they can not only change the outcome of something that happened in the past? How ridiculous is that? I'm not a big fan of Will & James but I am pragmatic enough to realize that this season was filmed in 2018 and nothing I say on social media will affect the results. As for whether or not it will affect the way racers behave on TAR in the future - the only thing that matters is whether or not such tactics will crush the competition and help you win a million dollars. This is not a popularity contest and the contestants take part to win a million dollars rather than try to be popular on social media. Some of these idiots of social media are delusional - I choose to ignore them and not respond to them on social media; Good grief, they are genuinely stupid. There are many stupid people out there who watch TAR.
That's it from me on this episode. Let's see what happens next in Manila, this should be fun as there so few teams now, so we will get to see a lot more of each team left in the next episode. Leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
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