At the travel agency, teams lined up to wait for it to open at 9 am. Everyone is on the same page that they should get their tickets in the order in which everyone arrived. Obviously, the Barbies try to game the system and cut in front of Tom and Terry. After a little spat with DuKa, Tom tells Terry, "They are not gonna win a beauty pageant of kindness, that is for sure." Snap.
Once the teams make it to Hanoi, Duke and Lauren have a local ride in their taxi. She takes them on a 30-minute ride out of the way, much to Lauren's dismay. By the time they make it, their $11 is hardly enough to cover the cab. Fortunately, Duke shakes the driver's hand and makes a quick getaway--he didn't split without paying, but he sure did stiff his driver. Would the bad karma come back to bite 'em?
At the Hanoi Hilton, the teams have to wait until morning to get inside. Their task, when the sun comes up, is to find John McCain's flight suit--yes, that John McCain. Dave, wearing a blue Kentucky Wildcats basketball jersey, is happy to be in Vietnam because his father served in the war. That doesn't make him stop for a moment of silence in the former POW prison, though. Only T & T, as well as Erwin and Godwin, stopped for a moment to pay respects.
Teams then jet to a flower shop in the old quarter. Most people take taxis, but Duke and Lauren don't have any money for it--they're still broke as a joke. Despite walking across town, they don't have trouble catching up with the other teams selling flowers for this episode's Road Block. Teams have to make 80,000 dong by selling flowers from bikes while wearing coolie hats. Peter does a great job of selling them thanks to his blond hair, and Duke's sales skills are also primo. (After all, Lauren tells Duke, You're in sales, you do it!") After creating chaos in the streets of Hanoi, everyone's off to Din Vac to find a detour and the pit stop.
Edwin and Godwin are the first to the Buddhist temple in Din Vac. This week's detour is "Fuel or Fowl": either making coal bricks or making a birdcage. (We know what you're thinking--T & T shattered stereotypes by not picking the birdcage.) All the teams save--Duke and Lauren--pick coal brick making, which seems pretty easy. Duke and Lauren have a decent time crafting their cage, but it just took them too long. Everyone else cranks out the bricks and skips out to Canh Dong Dia, a rice paddy just outside of the village.
T & T show up to the pit stop but incur a 30-minute penalty for illegally riding bareback. (Oh, come on! On a motorcycle!) They have to endure a nail-biting wait next to a disheveled Phil to see if any other teams show up. He astutely points out that "Guys, this has got to suck." Duke and Lauren, with their birdcage crafting, just aren't fast enough to catch up--they're eliminated.
Best bit of American diplomacy:
A dozen Americans toting camera equipment and backpacks through a bus stop screaming "Vac? Vac! Vac?!" We were waiting for a Vietnamese bus driver to scream out "Goose!"
The Scoreboard:
Erwin and Godwin win a home entertainment system for coming in first. (These prizes are getting worse and worse, no?) Duke sounds like he may have learned to accept his lesbian daughter. A cabal of normal, friendly people is emerging, which we're eager to follow: The Karma Chameleons--Lyn, Karlyn, Dave, Mary, the Cho brothers and T & T. Still free agents are creeptastic Peter and Sarah as well as Dustin and Kandice.
Coming Next Week:
Speaking of Peter, he pushes the limits of what Sarah can take. And Rob and Kimberly snap at each other in what looks like Thailand.
