hdnmickey

Maybe I missed something posted online about it after the fact, but as presented during the episode it seemed like there was only 5 boats, and the other teams could wait, but obviously chose not to. It's not unusual at all for teams to have to wait for others to finish due to the logistics. But the do often give them time slots which basically is the same as waiting for one of 5 water taxis during this episode.

The whole thing sure seemed planned from the beginning. Knowing everybody would choose water, they didn't let on that only the first five could leave right away. Nice little twist compared to the time slots usually given.

Bill Needle

Which brings to mind something I've always assumed but never confirmed: Teams must be required to take a minimum fixed amount of time to prep for training and safety gearing for some types of challenges. Otherwise there would be a lot of temptation to say "Screw that safety harness, this is for a million dollars!" as the team (without breaking stride) sprints across a tightrope between two skyscrapers.

hdnmickey

I seem to remember them showing some of that prep in the past. But probably only when it would been extremely obvious that something like that was needed or somebody did something worth airing during the prep session.

LaxBandit

Taken From a TV Guide . com Interview -

TV Guide - As a New Kids and Race fan, I was bummed to see you guys go. How far behind were you?
Jonathan - [Laughs] We were too! I think it was an hour and a half behind.

TV Guide - Did you think you ever had a chance to catch up?
Jonathan - I thought we would've been able to catch up a little bit. You really never know. I think if we had gone to another country, we would've been able to. The whole leg before that, we didn't see anybody. There was no indicator of where we were in the order.

TV Guide - What happened with the flights last week?
Jonathan - They couldn't show it because it would've taken too long, but we had been in the Tokyo airport and there are two terminals and you had to take a bus to go to each one. So each airline would say, "We don't have any room here," so it was hours and hours of going back and forth between the terminals. And then finally one came up and we said, "Let's take it." And then the connection flight, there was more trouble there. There was more stuff that went on, but it would've taken too long to air. But when we finally got to Thailand, we saw that everyone was starting at a good time and we had an opportunity to catch up. We were going through the challenges really quickly, so that was great. We were zipping through those.

TV Guide - How long did the Speed Bump take?
Jonathan - It was pretty quick. Half of the grasshopper was already built and we had to add the legs and part of the body, so it wasn't completely from scratch. We just had to make it look exactly like it was. I think if we had not done the Speed Bump, we probably could've caught up. For like 15 minutes - we were looking in one of the temples and it wasn't the right one, so we had to go out and look again.

Harley - That does cut into our time and every minute counts. I think if we didn't have to do it, it would've shaved off 30 minutes.

Spiderbite

Well, I feel dumb right now. I thought they had to cut the pieces and create the damn thing. Looked hard as hell to me.

bralph

Yeah, she was a total bitch in this episode. Her obsession with finishing 7th instead of 8th made no sense at all. As her partner said, there was no sense at all in burning that bridge with the other team at that point. Now they have no chance at working with them in the future, and that other team will bad mouth them to everyone else. It wasn't even a short-sighted decision. It was just dumb, dumb, dumb...

Hayley and Blair have virtually no shot. They don't trust each other at all, and every little thing one of them does annoys the crap out of the other.

starseed1981

Blair hates Hayley. That one is an atom bomb waiting to go off.

davidh777

It was probably the editing. I also thought it looked harder than most of the recent speed bumps.

lwhy?

And yet they've finished in 2nd place the last two episodes. I don't want them to win, but you never know they could be the next Zach and Flo of the Amazing Race and win it all. I shudder at the thought of it though.