Amazing Race

As always, SPOILERS!

When we last saw our racers they were in Ho Chi Minh City. This week's episode opened with news that they'd be traveling to Sean Penn, er Phnom Penh. The teams arrived at the airport with news that the next available flight didn't leave for some 16 or 17 hours. On our couch, we call this a 'bunching point' as the very long delay lets everyone catch up and the teams bunch together. High drama this week as the last two teams couldn't get on the same flight but were instead waitlisted for a flight a couple of hours later. At the last possible minute, they were allowed on so everyone arrived at the same time.
(Two possibly interesting things here. The distance between the two cities is about 130 miles. Did the clue say that they had to fly and couldn't drive? Don't remember and I'm too lazy to rewind the DVR.
Second thing, each team must actually secure four seats. Two for them and one for each the sound person and cameraman. They reshoot all of the airport sequences with the ticketing agents so that it looks like they only get two. That means that the airline must have cleared 5-8 seats at the last second. The plane looked small, less than 100 passengers. And that means I'm calling production crew trickery on this episode!)
Each team had to go to the Foreign Correspondent Club (which made me think of this) and find the right man to whisper to. Then he gave them a picture of a woman in a car and told them to find a hotel suite named after her. Yikes! We loved this task. The FP Gal immediately saw that it was Jackie O. I think I would have come up with her name. Anyway... it was tough because they had to rely on the locals. That shuffled the order of the teams quite well. Actually, all of the tasks did a good job of shuffling. We thought it was a pretty good set.
A racing first [update: the FP Gal reminds me that this happened just last season too] this week as one team lost a passport and was disqualified. A really bad break as they would have won this leg otherwise. Note to future racers, take a taxi whistle and a passport pouch to hang around your neck. And a list of airport hubs. Trust me on that one.
We were disappointed with the last season but we've loved this one so far. There is only one team that we're actively rooting against (though I'm sure others will volunteer their services). The locations have been interesting and the tasks have been fun. There are good people all over this season (especially the Globetrotters). This just further cements it as our favorite show.