Last Updated: 11/16/09
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 Read about this week's episode at our Amazing Race page!
 Episode 7: 11/08/09
Episode 6: 11/01/09
Episode 5: 10/25/09
Episode 4: 10/18/09
Episode 3: 10/11/09
Episode 2: 10/04/09
Episode 1: 09/28/09
Winners: Harlem Globetrotters Flight Time and Big Easy celebrated Flight Time's birthday by winning this week's leg. Their prize was a trip for two to Turks and Caicos.
Eliminated: Father/son team Gary and Matt trailed the pack throughout the leg and were the last to arrive at the Pit Stop. But they lucked out -- this week was a non-elimination leg. Next week they'll have to carry out a penalty task, but they've survived to race another day.
Detour: Teams had to choose between Nobel Dynamite (fill a number of sandbags to create a protective bunker, then set off a dynamite explosion in a rock quarry) or Viking Alphabet (decode a message using Viking letters). Unsurprisingly, all the teams chose to work off a little Race frustration by blowing things up.
Roadblock: Remember the hellish hay bale Roadblock from season six, which eliminated the lovely Lena and Kristy? It's baa-aaack! One member of each team had to unroll a series of heavy hay bales until they found one containing their next clue. Between Meghan whining and Dan haranguing his brother from the sidelines, this has to be one of the loudest Roadblocks we've seen all season.
Biggest Blunder: After missing the first train from the airport to downtown Stockholm, Gary and Matt fell even further behind once they got the wheel of their own vehicle and had to navigate for themselves. Flummoxed by the strange Swedish street names, they wasted valuable time driving aimlessly around the city.
Savviest Travel Move: At the Detour, brothers Sam and Dan used their brains -- and their hands -- to make the task of filling the sandbags go faster. Instead of putting dirt into the bags with a shovel, they simply swept it in with their bare hands, a much faster tactic.
Funniest Moment: We enjoyed watching Flight Time and Big Easy debate over what to name their Travelocity gnome. What next -- will Louisiana Shorty show up as the new mascot for the Harlem Globetrotters?
Must-See Sight: Sign us up for a visit to Tivoli Grona Lund Amusement Park! (We're staying far away from any and all hay bales.)
Europe Tips & Resources
Scandinavia Forum
Write About Your Trip to Sweden!
Winners: Brothers Sam and Dan finally won their first leg of the Race, and were awarded a sand buggy as a prize. (They seemed to be asking the same question we were -- what exactly is a sand buggy and what the heck will they do with it?)
Eliminated: Poker players Maria and Tiffany, shivering in a fierce wind and seemingly incapable of completing either Detour option, essentially gave up on the Race in the middle of a field in Holland. Phil left the Pit Stop and came to them in order to eliminate them (otherwise we bet he'd still be waiting for them to arrive).
Detour: This week featured two multifaceted options: Farmer's Game (swim across a creek and play three holes of "farmer's golf") and Farmer's Dance (ring a bell on top of a high striker, learn and perform a Dutch folk dance, and then eat a serving of salted herring with onions). Sam and Dan steamrolled easily through the golf, while Harlem Globetrotters Flight Time and Big Easy showed off their twinkletoes at the dancing challenge. Maria and Tiffany, however, were defeated by both the bell striking and golf swinging (each of which they tried twice).
Roadblock: One member of each team had to climb up into a bell tower, count the number of bells and present the correct total (62) to the carillon player. Although the task appeared challenging to both the thighs and the eardrums (once the huge bells started ringing, the Racers could barely hear themselves think), most Racers completed it quickly. The exception was Ericka, who on her first go-round somehow managed to miss 19 bells. Guess her many beauty pageant skills don't include counting.
Biggest Blunder: Brian and Ericka get this week's "Comedy of Errors" award for an incredibly sloppy leg that included not only Ericka's counting crisis at the Roadblock but also Brian's inability to put their car into drive in the beginning of the leg, as well as their failure to use the provided bikes to get around at the Detour. They were punished for the latter, both by Phil (who dinged them with a 30-minute penalty for not following Race directions) and by themselves -- walking long distances in the heavy, poorly fitting Dutch clogs they had to wear was pretty painful if Ericka's shrill complaining was any indication.
Savviest Travel Move: Sometimes it's worth a little extra money to get where you're going without getting lost -- which is why we liked Meghan, Cheynne, Sam and Dan's decision to hire a cab to lead them out of Groningen.
Funniest Moment: Both Detour options required the Racers to don traditional Dutch duds, with a male and a female costume for each team (regardless of whether the team actually had a male and a female). Sam, Gary and Flight Time looked awfully sweet in their dresses.
Must-See Sight: It would be fun to climb up the carillon in Groningen and get a sweeping view over the town -- but we'll bring earplugs, just in case.
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Winners: Dating couple Meghan and Cheynne continued their frontrunning ways by winning yet another leg (and a pair of personal watercraft). Upon hearing the good news, Cheynne dragged Meghan into the sea for a quick celebratory dip.
Eliminated: After running a respectable leg, dating couple Mika and Canaan met their match at the last task of the leg: a six-story waterslide at the Atlantis Resort. Terrified of both water and heights, Mika was unable to make herself go down the slide -- despite Canaan's sometimes questionable combination of cajoling, complaining and brute force. When the Globetrotters showed up and quickly completed the slide, Mika and Canaan's elimination was sealed.
Detour: Teams had to choose between Gold (measure out $500,000 worth of gold at a local jewelry store while adjusting for constantly changing exchange rates) and Glass (assemble 12 hookahs at a local souk). The teams working on the Glass option under the searing Dubai sun looked awfully hot and miserable; perhaps they should have gotten a chance to use those hookahs after they assembled them -- you know, to reduce a little stress.
Roadblock: One member of each team had to row an inflatable dinghy from a marina to a yacht anchored nearby and collect a watch from a local sheik. Racers then had to figure out that the time on the watch -- 8:35, or 8-3-5 -- was the combination needed to open a briefcase they'd received at the beginning of the leg. The Globetrotters fell behind when Big Easy failed to make the correct connection between the time displayed and the numbers he was supposed to put in. (Get that man a digital watch!)
Biggest Blunder: As far as we're concerned, Mika's biggest mistake wasn't failing to go down the waterslide but coming on the Race with such a debilitating fear of water and heights in the first place. Has she ever seen the show?
Savviest Travel Move: Sam and Dean made the smart decision to throw a cheap $2 calculator into their backpack before the Race. It paid off at the Detour when they were calculating the conversion rates for gold, but it's a useful tool for any traveler who needs to quickly figure out an exchange rate.
Funniest Moment: There was some unorthodox rowing going on at the Roadblock, from Gary piloting his dinghy canoe-style to Big Easy abandoning his paddles altogether and leaning into the water for a slow (but eventually effective) doggie paddle.
Must-See Sight: We'd love to check out the Atlantis Resort to see if Dubai's version lives up to its ostentatious Nassau sibling. (This being Dubai, home of the ski resort in the middle of the desert, we have a feeling it will.)
Slideshow: Best Cities for Architecture
Middle East Forum
Write About Your Trip to Dubai!
Winners: Dating couple Meghan and Cheynne cruised into first place after completing the Fast Forward, which allowed them to skip all other tasks and head straight to the Pit Stop. Their prize was a trip for two to Jamaica.
Eliminated: Engaged couple Lance and Keri took their previous navigational woes to new heights this week, spending most of the leg driving aimlessly around Dubai. (In an impressive display of imcompetence, they even managed to get lost in a parking garage before they ever set foot in a vehicle.) After falling inexorably behind, they were eliminated.
Detour: For a task taking place in the heart of a desert, this week's Detour presented Racers with a rather bizarre choice: Build a Snowman (construct a snowman quickly before it melted under the hot Dubai sun) or Find a Snowman (search through a mound of snow for a tiny snowman). Both options were carried out at a massive indoor ski resort. The Alps it ain't, but we have to give the resort developers points for sheer chutzpah.
Roadblock: One member of each team had to "Find Water" in the desert, searching a seemingly endless landscape of dunes for urns of water buried in the sand. Trudging through the sand in 120-degree heat, the Racers looked more than a little hot and bothered by the task -- especially Lance, whose frustration apparently brought out his inner Tarzan. When he found an urn with no water in it, he picked it up and heaved it as hard as he could, watching it shatter with a demented yell. (An impassioned performance -- but we'd have scored him a 10 if he'd only beaten his chest a little.)
Fast Forward: The only one of its kind in the Race, the Fast Forward could be completed by only one team, and it enabled that team (in this case, Meghan and Cheynne) to skip all of the leg's remaining tasks and go straight to the Pit Stop. To get the Fast Forward, Meghan and Cheynne had to go to Dubai Autodrome and have one team member drive a lap around the racetrack there in 45 seconds or less. While Meghan fretted on the sidelines, Cheynne jumped wholeheartedly into the task and completed it in just 40 seconds. As if the flashy racecar weren't enough, they got to drive to the Pit Stop in a Maserati.
Biggest Blunder: Poker player Maria was lucky that Lance and Keri were still driving in circles around Dubai when she backed her SUV over a stake and ripped open the vehicle's radiator; otherwise, the time it took to get a replacement vehicle might have left them solidly in last place.
Savviest Travel Move: It pays to know your geography. Ericka seemed to be the only Racer who knew immediately that the world's tallest building was in Dubai, enabling them to move quickly to the airport to book their flight.
Funniest Moment: As she drove the highways of Dubai, Mika marveled at how smooth her ride was: "You can drive 120 miles an hour here and it feels like 60." Canaan pointed out that her speedometer was measuring kilometers, not miles -- so she was essentially driving 60 miles an hour. (More like 74.5 miles an hour, but who's counting?)
Must-See Sight: Sign us up for a camel ride through the desert -- just make sure to bring plenty of bottled water.
Slideshow: Best Cities for Architecture
Middle East Forum
Write About Your Trip to Dubai!
Winners: Friends Zev and Justin arrived at the Pit Stop in first place, but then realized that Zev's passport was missing. While Zev and Justin headed back to the Race course to look for the missing passport, brothers Sam and Dan found themselves bumped up to first place.
Eliminated: Even after retracing their steps, Zev and Justin were still unable to find Zev's passport. They returned to the Pit Stop in last place and were eliminated from the Race.
Detour: This week's options were Cover (sell four motorcycle helmets to a local family for a price of $10) and Wrap (search a crowded market for a woman wearing a scarf with a particular color and pattern). Loud-mouthed engaged couple Lance and Keri were the only team to choose the Cover option; though they did eventually manage to complete it, we wonder whether they would have done better at a yelling task than a selling one....
Roadblock: One member of each team had to dress like a monkey (an animal revered in Cambodian culture) and complete three "monkey maneuvers," which seemed to amount to little more than crouching and walking across a log. It wasn't the most exciting or challenging of Roadblocks, but several Racers struggled a bit with the task -- including Zev, who seemed to be suffering a bit from heat exhaustion, and Maria, who seemed to be suffering nothing more serious than chronic clumsiness.
Biggest Blunder: Zev and Justin faced a traveler's worst nightmare this week when they lost one of their passports. We're sure having to wait in line at the nearest U.S. embassy to replace Zev's passport merely added an insult to the injury of being eliminated from the Race. (Learn what to do in the case of a lost or stolen passport.)
Savviest Travel Move: When Zev, Justin, Lance and Keri learned that there wouldn't be enough seats on the first flight to Cambodia for their teams, they immediately put themselves on the standby list and then politely but persistently pressed Vietnam Airlines employees to try to find room for them. Their patience paid off, and both teams joined the rest of the Racers on the earliest flight.
Funniest Moment: We didn't know whether to laugh or cry when all but two Racers failed to recognize Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in a photo taken during the former First Lady's visit to Cambodia. Incorrect guesses included "Queen Elizabeth" and "someone of Cambodian descent." Oy. Can we remove these teams from the Race and send them to an Amazing History Class instead?
Must-See Sight: We'd love to visit this week's Pit Stop, Wat Phnom ("Hill Temple"), the tallest religious structure in Phnom Penh.
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Write About Your Trip to Cambodia!
Winners: Harlem Globetrotters Flight Time and Big Easy beat out dating couple Meghan and Cheynne in a footrace to the finish -- and won themselves a trip to Aruba.
Eliminated: Doomed by their slow performance at the Detour, dating couple Ron and Marcy were the last team to reach the Roadblock and never managed to catch up. They were the third team eliminated from the Race.
Detour: This week's choices were Child's Play (requiring the teams to transport a concrete animal through a local park) and Word Play (a task in which teams had to look down on a traffic circle from the observation desk of a hotel, pick out six letters being carried by scooters below, and then unscramble the letters to form a Vietnamese word). Nearly every team chose Child's Play, which proved to be the quicker option despite a few spills (we're glad Justin and Zev's giraffe wasn't a real animal -- its poor neck never would have survived such treatment). Marcy and Ron were the only team to tackle the Word Play option, and they wasted far too much time trying to unscramble the letters themselves before they finally asked a Vietnamese-speaking local to help solve the puzzle.
Roadblock: This week's Roadblock required one member of each team to dismantle two VCR's using a few local tools. Lawyer Lance must have missed the memo about using tools -- instead, he used his bare hands to rip the machines apart. The strategy saved him time, but we couldn't help wondering if this aggressively "manly" display was compensating for something....
Biggest Blunder: Engaged couple Lance and Keri were a walking, talking (or should we say "bickering"?) comedy of errors this week, careening blindly past multiple clue boxes and getting lost just about everywhere they went. Despite Lance's assertion that he and Keri were lions in a Race full of gazelles, the engaged couple fell to ninth place out of 10.
Savviest Travel Move: At the Detour, several teams made it a point to choose animals that weren't very tall, correctly assuming that these would be less likely to fall over as they were dragged on dollies through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City.
Funniest Moment: When faced with the task of snatching a bullet from the mouth of a puppet dragon, dating couple Mika and Canaan seemed convinced that doing a little interpretive dance would help coax the dragon to give up its prize. It didn't work, but we can't say we didn't enjoy a good laugh at their attempt. (Good thing they're on The Amazing Race and not Dancing with the Stars.)
Must-See Sight: Reunification Palace is our top spot this week for its historic role as the site of the end of the Vietnam War.
Asia Deals and Features
Southeastern Asia Message Board
Write About Your Trip to Vietnam!
Winners: In this week's double episode, there were two sets of winners. Dating couple Meghan and Cheyne won the first leg, landing themselves a future trip to Aspen and Vail as a prize. Father/son team Gary and Matt took the honors in the second leg and won a pair of kayaks.
Eliminated: In a shocking development, married yoga teachers Eric and Lisa were eliminated before the Race even began when they failed to complete the very first task: searching a thousand license plates for one from the Shinagawa Tokyo district of Japan. The 11 teams who found the correct plates were given airline tickets to Tokyo, while the unfortunate Eric and Lisa were sent home. So long, yoga teachers -- in a few weeks, we won't even remember your names.
Poker players Maria and Tiffany finished last at the end of the first leg but were saved by an early non-elimination. On-and-off couple Garrett and Jessica weren't so lucky, doomed by uncooperative ducks at a Roadblock in Vietnam. They became the second team eliminated from the Race.
Roadblock: There were two Roadblocks in this week's episode. The first one, in Tokyo, brought Racers onto the colorful, clamorous set of a Japanese game show. As the audience clapped and shouted encouragement, an enthusiastic host spun a roulette wheel laden with sushi. One member of each team had to eat whatever food landed in front of him or her -- including an ultra-hot "wasabi bomb." Only when the Racer had downed the spicy sushi within a two-minute time limit could the team move on.
The second Roadblock, in Vietnam, gave a new meaning to the phrase "getting your ducks in a row." One member of each team had to herd 150 ducks across a bridge and then back into their pen. Some Racers had an easy time with the task, while in other cases it was difficult to tell exactly who was herding whom.
Speed Bump: As a penalty for finishing last in the first leg, Maria and Tiffany had to perform an extra task in the second leg. Luckily, mixing ingredients to serve up a traditional Vietnamese soup known as pho was a snap for Maria, who is a pho fanatic in real life.
Funniest Moment: We got a kick out of Marcy leading a group of visor-clad Japanese tourists in a chant of "team blue!" and then encouraging them to skip together through the streets of Tokyo. But considering how long it took Marcy and Ron to get their group to the Pit Stop, maybe they should have considered spending less time on team building and more time on, oh, actually racing.
Savviest Travel Move: After departing from the first Pit Stop, a number of teams went straight to a nearby Internet cafe to book their tickets to Vietnam, thus guaranteeing themselves a spot on the earliest available flight. Teams who waited till they got to the airport had to throw themselves upon the mercy of the ticket agents to find them seats on a sold-out flight.
Biggest Blunder: We know the teams are always dizzy with adrenaline at the very beginning of the Race, but surely more than one Racer should have noticed the Japanese symbol at the top of their clue -- a hint that made the seemingly difficult license plate task much easier. Pun intended: get a clue!
Must-See Sight: After the chaos of the Race's first leg, Konno Hachimangu Shrine was a lovely, peaceful oasis in the heart of Tokyo.
Trip Report: Two Weeks in Japan
Japan Message Board
Write About Your Trip to Japan!
Asia Deals and Features
Southeastern Asia Message Board
Write About Your Trip to Vietnam!
For more on this episode, visit CBS.com.
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