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The Way You Look, Yeah

My personal favorites for this season, Oswald and Danny, took off from Krakow, Poland with instructions to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Uchenna and Joyce were right behind, and working separately, the two teams secured a 7:00am flight, to arrive at 6:40am the following day. That's the only part I'd hate about the race - these day-long (or more) trips just to get from one city to the next.

Unfortunately for Uchenna and Joyce, their travel agent suggests a risky flight with a one hour connection in Frankfurt. Oswald and Danny score a better connection through Paris instead. Meanwhile, Charla and Mirna use the hotel's connection to book seats online - but the two of them use the two available terminals, which earns them the wrath of Eric and Danielle. I guess the didn't learn to share earlier in life. Perhaps it will come back and bite them later. We can hope.

It certainly didn't hurt them now, because Charla and Mirna find a flight landing in Kuala Lumpur at 4:45am - not bad at all - while Eric and Danielle have to settle for the same flight as Oswald and Danny, heading through Paris and landing at 7:25am. Uchenna and Joyce decide to continue on to Frankfurt, but when their plane lands 10 minutes late, their worst fear is confirmed, as they can't make the connection. Whoops.

Charla and Mirna cruise to the first clue box, and find that they have to head to Kampung Baru Mosque, and search the nearby streets for the next clue, as well as the first Yield, where they can slow down another team. Impressively, they choose not to use the power of the Yield. This moves the cousins up a notch in my book, but they are still annoying.

Easily arriving to the Detour in first place, they have to choose between Artistic Expression and Cookie Confection.

In Artistic Expression, the team must travel one-third of a mile on foot to Dewan Lama. Once there, they had to use an ancient technique known as batik to exactly duplicate one of three patterns onto and then dye a 45 square-foot piece of cloth. The task required the careful application of an artistic skill, but a team with an eye for detail could find them selves jumping ahead.

In Cookie Confection, the team makes their way on foot half a mile to Chow Kit Bomba and searches through 600 boxes of traditional Malaysian special cookies to find the one that had a black licorice center. This task requires no skill, but a team with a sweet tooth and a bit of luck could finish quickly.

While Charla and Mirna stuff themselves with cookies, Dustin and Kandice begin to plot their use of the Yield. No one knew who would arrive first, but when the beauty queens arrive to find that it hasn't been used, they decide to make Eric and Danielle wait for a bit. Eric, needless to say, was not happy, referring to the girls as "dirty pirate hookers". He wasn't kidding.

Finally Charla and Mirna give in, and decide to give their artistic side a chance. About then, Dustin and Kandice finish the task (mostly because Charla wasn't tall enough to help much), and there's a new leader - the girls head six miles away to Taman Sri Hartamas to locate a newspaper truck.

Before we get to that, Danny and Oswald have a fight over the cookies, mostly because Danny thought that the entire box of cookies contained the black cookie. So he would bite one and dump the entire box. Meanwhile, Oswald believed that any one cookie could contain the licorice, so you had to bite every one - they left, and returned, then finally left and did the other task, showing that usually if you switch tasks, it will hurt you considerably. If you're going to switch, do it early.

Dustin and Kandice arrived at the newspaper truck to find the Roadblock. One member of the team has to collect enough newspapers to make a stack eight hands high. Kandice pedaled off quickly, and finished just as Charla and Mirna showed up for the task.

Mirna took this task, as there was no way that Charla could handle the regular-sized bicycle. As she did, Dustin and Kandice stepped on the mat at Caracosa Seri Negara to claim first place, and a pair of retro scooters.

While she couldn't have done it herself, Mirna collected a bunch of local volunteers to help, and managed to pick up a second place finish. Danielle was racing Danny, and did some damage to the bike, but walked to a third place finish while Danny had to resort to purchasing newspapers using much of his and Oswald's cash reserves.

• Dustin and Kandice are looking very strong at this point.
• Charla and Mirna really have me snowed - can they win it all?
• Eric and Danielle also surprised me, maybe they can turn it on.
• Oswald and Danny had what it takes, but seem to be fading fast.

Uchenna and Joyce finally landed in Kuala Lumpur as the sun set, and they found out that they had been eliminated from the race. At least they didn't have to do the tasks, only to find out that they had then been eliminated.

It didn't surprise me that Uchenna and Joyce were gone, as I had felt that they were fading - but I was a bit surprised that they got caught trying to take a risky route, and ended up so far out of it. What did surprise me was that Oswald and Danny performed so poorly. Usually they get along so well. I hope this isn't the beginning of the end for them. The way they get along is their strongest asset!