So I started watching Season 3 of The Amazing Race Asia, and it’s been intense—about 50% more intense than any season of the American version. This may simply be a reflection of Asia itself: half the world’s population, but only one-third of the resources, so it’s dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, and all that. Because of the jacked-up population-to-resource ratio, Asians seem to be willing to suffer a lot more for a lot less. For the competitors on The Amazing Race Asia, they suffer twice the brutalization for 1/10th the prize money ($100,000 for TARA compared to $1 million for TAR). They might as well call it The Amazing Race: Extreme Edition. As an example, Season 3 kicked off in Bangkok, Thailand with the contestants having to eat a huge bowl of scorpions, frogs, and bugs just to get their first clue. It wasn’t even a roadblock or a detour! Now that’s good television.
As with past seasons, there seems to be an inordinate number of entertainment personalities/insiders (or wannabes) looking for publicity among the contestants. Also, because the contestants have to be fluent in English, they tend to have a Western education, with all the arrogance and sense of entitlement that breeds. And because they’re generally all Asian, they’re also especially rude and pushy to everyone around them: their partners, taxi drivers, random strangers, etc. It’s awesome.
Here’s how brutal the race is. The team from Thailand was comprised of two beauty queens, who, as a subspecies of humanity, are among the most cutthroat haters and misanthropes in the world. They will stab you in the back, do shots of your blood, and laugh while you bleed to death. Indeed, one member of Team Thailand was Russian-Canadian Natalie Glebova, who is married to Thai tennis pro Paradorn Srichaphan. She was also Miss Universe 2005. Miss Universe 2005! Think about that: for 2005, she was the most competitive and cutthroat woman in the UNIVERSE. Can you guess what happened to that one? Basically, by the second episode, after a 25-hour bus ride in Vietnam and being dirty, she shut down emotionally, had a mental breakdown, and essentially gave up and quit! Miss Universe 2005! Now that’s really good television.
Seriously, before the race is over, someone is going to die…either by their own hand, the hand of their partner, stress, food poisoning, a crazy taxi driver, a veering truck, the bird flu, a random drifter, an overzealous public security officer, political unrest/unsuccessful coup attempt/peasant uprising/government crackdown, hepatitis, rampaging caribou, collapsing bridge/shoddy construction work, etc.