Amazing Race Asia

My favourite reality show, Amazing Race, now has its own Asian version. Amazing Race Asia, its premiere was shown by AXN Asia just now. There are ten teams competing on this race, including one team from Indonesia, one team from Singapore, two teams from Malaysia and some other teams from other parts of Asia. The show is hosted by Singapore-based Allan Wu, who has participated in the US reality show, Fear Factor.

The race started at the Dataran Merdeka (or Independence Square) of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Their first destination was the Berjaya Times Square shopping mall, and Sahran, one of the participants from Sri Lanka, cried when he learned that he would need to climb down the void of the shopping mall, from the 8th floor down, using a rope. But he finished the task, eventually!

I was also laughing to see the contestants from Indonesia, brothers Marsio and Mardy. Looks like they are not "too athletic" enough for the race, seems to be already exhausted while reaching the mall, even though they took the cab from Dataran Merdeka to the mall. My wife even commented that the Indonesian brothers wouldn't be able to even pass the second or third leg of the race.

From Times Square, all the contestants had to go to Kompleks Kraf (Craft Complex) for their detour, either batik painting or pot making, using pottery wheel. Once they completed the detour, all the contestants headed to Shah Alam Stadium for a gokart ride, before going to the pit stop at the top of Menara Kuala Lumpur (the KL Tower). And I was very surprised to see that the Indonesian brothers, Marsio and Mardy, managed to take the lead and become the winner of this leg of the race! Well, actually the Malaysians Andrew and Syeon were the first to arrive after overtaking Marsio and Mardy on the last race to the pitstop (of course!), however they didn't follow the instruction on which route to use to go to the tower, so they had to redo their steps, and Marsio and Mardy became the winner.

It's quite difficult to predict who will be at the top three at this stage. The Singaporean girls Sharon and Melody seemed to be quite difficult to keep up, and came to be the sixth to arrive. My favourites are the Malaysian girls Zabrina and Joe Jer, who were actually the first team to arrive at the Times Square and finished the detour at Kompleks Kraf, but were being overtaken by Marsio and Mardy on their way to Shah Alam.

For the second leg of the race, based on the next week's trailer at the end of this week's show, it seems to me that they are going to Indonesia, West Sumatra to be exact, because I saw some Minangkabau-style houses and "plate dance" (tari piring) show, which is Minangkabau's traditional dance. But I guess, we'll only be able to find out next week!

So, now, I have marked two important times of the week: Monday 9pm (Singapore time) for the Amazing Race 10 show, and Thursday 9pm (Singapore time) for the Amazing Race Asia show. I had to rely on AXN Asia to watch the show now, since Mediacorp's Channel 5 is no longer showing the latest season of Amazing Race, not too sure why. Thanks AXN Asia!