‘The Amazing Race’ 13 - Where is Cambodia?

Heaven help our education system. Last night on the fifth leg of this season of “The Amazing Race,” not one but two of the contestants had no idea where Cambodia — the next destination — was. Both Dallas of the mother-son team of Toni and Dallas and Andrew of the Superbad frat brothers team of Andrew and Dan were absolutely clueless that the country was in Asia. I doubt that either had even heard of the country before. Andrew’s excuse to Dan was that he didn’t go to a fancy prep school like his frat brother. Oy vey.

So last evening, the seven remaining teams left the sheep farm at Summerhill, New Zealand, for Siem Reap, Cambodia. But even before they took off from Auckland Airport to Siem Reap, Terence and Sarah ran into trouble with the law when Terence was ticketed for speeding. The couple had a 30-minute delay at the Pit Stop because of the problem with the law. Also while waiting for their tickets to Siem Reap, Kelly and Christy made fun of Dallas, calling him “Teen Wolf” and his mom, Toni, Wolf Mother.

Back to Siem Reap. Once they landed at the airport, the teams had to take a taxi to a roadside pumping station and put 25 gallons of diesel fuel into a truck, which they then took to Siem Reap Harbor.

At the harbor, they took a marked boat to a restaurant where the groups got their Detour-Village Life or Village Work. In Village Life, they had to take their boat and collect three things: a set of a teeth at a dentist’s office, a doll from a seamstress and a basketball at a floating basketball court. Of course, each member of the team had to make a basket. Village Work had the teams getting into waist-high water and finding two fishing traps with fish, carrying them back to the boat and then putting them in a basket in order to get their next clue. Terence and Sarah’s boat was steaming ahead of everyone else on their way to the restaurant only to have it break down before they got to the restaurant. Terence ended up having to help the pilot manually guide the boat in, typically whining all the way.

After the teams completed their tasks, they had to make their way to the legendary temple of Angkor Wat, which is a symbol of Cambodia and the largest religious temple in the world. The massive temple was the location of the Road Block where one member of each team had to find a tiny echo chamber, thump his or her chest in order to hear an echo and then get the next clue to go to the pit stop at Bayon Temple. Most of the teams had a difficult time finding the small room, especially Tina of the estranged couple of Ken and Tina who actually was walking in and out of the room without knowing she was in the chamber. Her tardiness made the couple go from first to fourth at the Pit Stop.

Winning last night’s leg were the brother and sister team of Nick and Starr — they had also won the first lap of the race — and they earned a vacation in St. John courtesy of the omni-present Travelocity.

The long-distance lovers Aja and Ty (pictured), who were the last to leave Summerhill, never caught up with the rest of the teams last night. Though the week before they were having issues with each other, the two seemed like they had reconciled their differences and played the race with gusto and determination.

Aja Benton, a makeup artist and actress in Los Angeles, and Ty White, who was based in Detroit, are now living together in L.A. since the end of the race. Ty works in payroll at a school district.
The hardest thing for Ty on the race was the long waiting in airports. “You can’t really prepare for waiting in airports and sleeping on the airport floor for 10 or 12 hours that never get shown in the show because it would get truly boring and get terrible ratings. ”

“What was surprising for me was how truly confusing the whole thing is,” says Aja. “You watch it on TV and it seems so simple. You open the clue, you read the clue, you go to the place. But it really is confusing. You read the clue and it seems practical — you go to a plaza where the next clue awaits but you go to the plaza and look for the clue box and you overlook it and get confused.”

Aja says they are “preparing” for eventual engagement and marriage. “We have discussed it,” she says. “But we are taking things one step at a time.”

— Susan King, Los Angeles Times staff writer