Introduction → Meet the Teams → Leg 1 → Leg 2 → Leg 3 → Leg 4 → Leg 5 → Leg 6 → Leg 7 → Leg 8A → Leg 8B → Leg 9 → Leg 10 → Leg 11 → Leg 12
Leg 14.01 – “I’m a celebrity in my country, but you don’t care, do you?”
It is just after sunrise and traveling on brand new Kia-sponsored high speed boats in the Pasig River are 12 brand new teams who will be Racing on The Amazing Race Philippines. But these are no ordinary teams. They are 12 celebrity! teams who will be Racing for themselves and for charity!
The teams are being taken to the Starting Line at Liawasang Bonifacio in front of the Manila Central Post Office.
There will be two flights to their first destination with room for six teams on each one. To get tickets on those flights, teams will run into the historic post office and search for marked sacks of mail. They must bring the sack back outside to the steps of the post office, dump the mail out and search for a “flight card” which they will exchange for their first clues and their plane tickets.
The first six teams to exchange their flight card will be on the first flight to… Nadi, Fiji! This flight via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific and Air Pacific arrives in Nadi at 7:05am. The last six teams will have to settle on the second flight via Seoul Incheon on Korean Air, arriving in Nadi at 8:35am.
There are 20 sacks of mail throughout the post office. Only 12 will contain flight cards. Three sacks will contain… a Trigger Point Card! If any team comes across a Trigger Point Card, the U-Turn or Yield will be activated on the next Leg. There is neither a Flight Card or a Trigger Point Card in the other five sacks of mail.
Once they get their clues and tickets, teams can head to Manila International Airport.
Upon arrival in Nadi, teams must make their way to Denarau Beach where they will participate in a Kava welcome ceremony and enjoy a Kava drink before being given their next clue.
That clue reveals a Duel Duel! For this very special Duel Duel, all six teams will face off in a Race to retrieve two halves of one clue by swimming into the water. Each team member will retrieve one half of the clue. The first team to return to shore with both halves will win an Express Pass! It will be valid until Leg 10.
After the Duel Duel, teams must figure out how to find this sugar cane farm in the Lautoka District. And here, teams will find a Double Road Block: Down or Up.
For this Double Road Block, the team member who chooses “Down” must cut down and harvest a section of sugar cane. Both team members will then load the sugar cane onto a trolley and push their load to a waiting truck. The team member who chooses “Up” must now load that harvested sugar cane up into the truck to receive the next clue.
Teams must now direct the driver of the truck to Lautoka Sugar Mill, the largest sugar mill in the southern hemisphere.
Teams must unload all the sugar cane to receive the next clue.
Teams will now head to Wailoaloa Beach. Here, teams must build a lovo, or underground oven, to help prepare a traditional Fijian feast.
After successfully building a lovo, teams will find the next clue in the Nadi Market. And that clue reveals a Detour: Stack or Sell.
For both Detours, teams must unload crates of mussels and deliver them to a marked stall in the market.
In Stack, teams must arrange the mussels into 75 equal stacks according to an example.
In Sell, teams must sell 25 stacks of mussels to locals.
After the Detour, teams can make their way on foot to Sri Siva Subramaniya Temple, the Pit Stop for this first Leg of the Race.
The first team to check-in here will win P200,000 courtesy of Shell V-Power Nitro+. Half of which will go automatically to their chosen charity. It is up to the teams what they do with the other P100,000. They can also donate that money to their charity, if they like =)
Unfortunately for the last celebrity team to arrive here, they WILL be eliminated.
“Director’s” Commentary
So, I’ve always had Fiji on my TAR wishlist, long before the Fiji tourism board started sponsoring Amazing Race US casting calls. TARUS has really avoided the islands of the South Pacific. And Fiji is certainly a great possible location.
Now, I do think this Leg right here is very generic. Again, like I always say, without having the chance to set foot on most of these locations, I would know almost nothing about them other than what’s on the internets. I’m sure an actual scouting trip would yield some great tasks and locations.
I feel like Fiji could easily be two Legs. One focused more on the water and typical island stuff like beaches, etc. The other Leg would be more rural and maybe cultural, especially visiting the highlands or even another island.
Anyway, let’s go back to the Starting Line first. There are only so many great, picturesque, 4K drone-ready locations in Metro Manila that are also convenient enough to be near the airport to enable teams to catch the right flights out. I’ve always had the Manila Post Office on my Starting Line shortlist, even though it’s already been used on the real TARPH. And with it being on the Starting Line shortlist, I’ve always included the TAR11-style digging through mail task as the Starting Line task. So that’s what we get here.
I thought it’d also be fun to include that Trigger Point card as well.
Once in Fiji, the kava welcome ceremony is a given, especially with the lack of cultural tasks in this Leg. I originally had that swim Duel Duel as a regular Route Info task. But I found a lack of Duel Duels on this route so I plopped one in here at the start instead.
It’s also an interesting Duel Duel because of the Express Pass prize as well as forcing the two plane groups to face off against each other instead of one-on-one. The task also takes care of the tropical side of the Leg AND it also allows for gratuitous skin from out hot bodied celebrity teams right in the first episode! lol
In my quick Google scouting trip of Nadi, I read about the Lautoka Sugar Mill being the largest in the southern hemisphere. So I thought, why not have that sugarcane harvesting as a task. Funny enough, the first Celebrity season visited Peru and recycled the TAR26 sugarcane Road Block. It’s a good task and very physical which is great to really work the celebrities.
Building a lovo is straightforward. As is the very simple Detour. Both though as part of a long first Leg should be nice to watch. And walking to the Pit Stop after a long day is a great challenge.
Overall, an okay opening Leg to challenge these 12 pampered celebrities. =)
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