The Amazing Race Asia Off to a Good Start

"We're competitive… and feminine," says Aubrey Miles about her pairing with best friend and model Jacqueline Yu. "We've been married for ten years," says Jeena Lopez of her partnership with husband Ernie, citing it as the best hint of their team's strength. And thus the two Filipino teams set the tone for their bid to be the first winners of $100,000 in The Amazing Race Asia (let's call it TAR-A from hereon, shall we?), which premiered last Thursday at 9pm on AXN.

The race opened at the Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where, upon the go-signal of host Allan Wu, the ten teams from different Asian countries (Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong) rushed to get to the Berjaya Times Square shopping mall. Funny, but I can't seem to recall any episode in the show's Western counterpart where they hit the malls, but I guess this is part of the Asian flavor. But lest you think it was a trifling little task they undertook, they all had brave their fear of heights (and public humiliation) pronto by rappelling down eight (yes, eight!) floors of the mall. The Filipino teams did well, with Jacq explaining how she distracted herself by looking at the shops she passed on the way down. Ernie, on the other hand, gave us a preview of his sporty self (he and Jeena met through rock-climbing) by zipping down those floors. The witticism of the moment went to Singaporean Sharon Wong who said, "Now I can say I shopped 'till I dropped." But the spotlight was on Sri Lankan Sahran Abeysundara-he with the many phobias who summed up what he expected out of his participation in TAR-A with a, "Let's just say we've never been backpacking before!"-who literally wept his heart out when he surprised himself by finishing the task.

As early as this episode, we see Aubrey and Jacq already taking pages out of the Paris Hilton-Nicole Richie book. At the Craft Cultural Complex for the Detour, where they chose batik painting over using a pottery wheel to make a clay pot, Aubrey compared batik painting to putting on make-up. They then charmed the person-in-charge into approving their less than perfect work. Following a taxi driver in a convoy to the Detour destination, and then to the Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve, Aubrey, who was at the wheel, wondered out loud, "Do we have to pay him or can we just give him a hug?" Jacq, on the other hand, lent her teammate a helping hand by powdering her nose. Of course, whatever make-up they had on had melted away by the time they got to the top of the Kuala Lumpur Tower, the Pit Stop for the Malaysian leg of the race, but their Paris-Nicole strategy landed them a close fourth.

Ernie and Jeena, on the other hand, are already showing themselves to be strong contenders. At 42 and 35 respectively, they're the oldest team, but they seem to have a good combination of smarts, stamina, passion, sense of adventure, and great communication skills only ten years of married life can teach. Topping that off is Ernie's nationalistic streak, which he unabashedly displayed by screaming, "Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!" as he and his wife raced with Aubrey and Jacq to the Pit Stop. They placed second. They could have finished first, but they had had a small traffic altercation (no thanks to right-hand drive) that delayed them early on. Indonesia is listed as the next leg of the race, with the other destinations most likely to include, according to Wikipedia, "Auckland, Bangkok, Istanbul, Jakarta, Sydney and Tokyo. The opening screens also show pictures taken from places in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam." Additional information can be found at the official The Amazing Race Asia website at www.axn-asia.com.

For those who missed the premiere episode, there will be replays tonight at 8pm, and tomorrow, Wednesday, at midnight on AXN. Email your comments to [email protected]. You may also post them at http://channelsurfing-freeman.blogspot.com.