Karma decided which team finished last for the second consecutive week of The Amazing Race.
Last week, the Hippies brought up the rear after using the Yield on
MoJo. This week, Monica & Joseph, the only racers not to lend BJ
any clothes, were eliminated.

At the start of this leg, BJ had
nothing to wear but a T-shirt and boxers. The rest of his belongings
had been confiscated as a penalty for finishing last on last week’s
non-elimination leg. Yolanda gave BJ her purple pair of spandex pants,
and Jeremy donated a pair of sandals.

The Hippies headed to
downtown Darwin, Australia, at 2 a.m. to beg for money, while the other
teams hung around the airport, booking flights to Thailand. BJ earned a
good amount of cash despite his tight, purple leggings. Jeremy said BJ
looked like “a girl with a beard.”

The three lead teams scored
seats on a flight to Bangkok, Thailand, but the Hippies — with BJ  now
sporting some baggy new board shorts — were shut out by the time they
got to the airport. Luckily, seats opened up on another flight that
landed an hour or two after the first.

When the first teams
landed in Bangkok around 10:15 p.m., they traveled by taxi to a bus
station. Frat Guys Eric & Jeremy and Ray & Yolanda purchased
tickets for the midnight bus to Lopburi and boarded the bus.

MoJo
asked their cabbie for help navigating the bus station, and he,
incorrectly, told them that the Lopburi ticket counter was closed
wouldn’t reopen until 5 a.m. They took his word for it and found a
hotel room, not knowing that the other teams’ bus hadn’t yet left.

The
Hippies arrived at the bus station just after midnight. They booked
tickets on the first bus of the morning, which left at 4:20 a.m. As
they had been instructed, MoJo got to the bus station at 5 a.m., and
they left for Lopburi at 5:20.

At their destination, teams met
in front of the Three Spires Pagoda. The Hippies got there just before
the temple opened at 8 a.m. to find the Frats and Ray & Yolanda
already waiting there.

Eric & Jeremy tried to befriend the
monkeys that call the temple home by feeding them Pringles. Ray kept
his distance and called the monkeys “rats on steroids.”

Inside
the temple, the clue contained directions to the second Fast Forward on
the race. The Hippies and Ray & Yolanda decided to take a chance on
a short cut to the Pit Stop by taking a cab two miles to a restaurant
for a “popular afterschool activity.”

In Thailand, a popular
afterschool activity is snacking on fried crickets. Yolanda was cocky
about her team’s chances at first. “We’re from the South,” she said.
“We eat anything fried.” But, after tasting a couple of the crispy
critters, she and Ray decided the monkeys didn’t look so bad and drove
back to the temple.

That left BJ & Tyler to finish a bowl of
crickets each. As Tyler’s bowl of “fingernails with guts inside” cooled
and the guts congealed, he questioned their decision. But they kept
downing crickets, taking occasional vomit breaks, and were able to
finish the Fast Forward.

They rode to Bangkok’s Marble Temple to
meet Phil, who congratulated them on being the first of three teams to
earn a spot in next week’s finale.

Instead of giving a prize to
the first team to finish this week’s leg, Travelocity included sealed
envelopes with each team’s clue at the temple. The team whose envelope
contained a picture of a golden Travelocity gnome received the prize.
The Hippies didn’t have the winning ticket, but they were excited just
to have pants and still be in the race.

Back at the monkey
temple, Eric was working on a Roadblock. One member of each team had to
slice and arrange fruit for a ceremonial offering to be given to the
monkeys. Unfortunately, monkeys aren’t very patient; much of Eric’s
time was spent chasing them away from his unfinished arrangement.

Monica
& Joseph finally arrived at the temple, only then realizing that
they were the last team to reach it. Joseph got to work on the
ceremonial offering, and when Ray & Yolanda got back from their
aborted Fast Forward attempt, Yolanda started sculpting her offering.

Eric
finished his display first, yelling, “Feast, you monkeys,” as the
hungry simians devoured the results of his hard work. The next clue
told teams to take a taxi 90 miles and catch a ferry to Koh Kret
Island. Joseph and Yolanda soon finished their tasks and followed right
behind.

Once on Koh Kret Island, teams had to find a cluebox in
the Buddha Garden. The Frats did, and the clue gave them a choice of
Detours: “Move It” or “Altar It.” They chose “Altar It,” which required
them to cover a Buddha statue in gold leaf and arrange it in a shrine.

MoJo
was the second team to the island, but they ignored the guide posts and
were again given bad directions. They found the shrine, but had to back
track a bit to find the Detour clue. By that time, Ray & Yolanda
had found their clue and also decided to “Altar It.”

MoJo
decided to check out “Altar It” since they already knew where the
shrine was, but opted for the other task after seeing how tedious it
was to apply gold leaf. “Move It” was a physical task, which to them
sounded much faster.

Both the Frats and Ray & Yolanda
persisted with their original task, spending extra time to correct
aesthetic problems the shrine judges found with their statues. Eric
& Jeremy finished first and caught a ferry to the mainland, where
they lost time looking for a cab.

Ray & Yolanda finished
soon after the Frats and were able to find a cab easily. Both teams
made their way through Bangkok’s crowded streets to the Marble Temple.

For
“Move It,” Monica and Joseph each carried a long plank of wood while
balancing terra cotta pots on top of it. They had to deliver a total of
72 pots to a nearby boat to receive their clue. If they were careful,
they could finish in two trips.

But much like the swordfish
carrying task in Sicily, the load was too heavy for Monica, both
physically and emotionally. On her second trip, she dropped 10 of her
12 pots, crying the whole way to the dock.

Joseph reassured her
more gently than he has in the past, encouraging her to just do the
best she could. As soon as the finished and got back to the mainland,
they grabbed a cab and drove to the temple for the finish.

Despite
their cab troubles, Eric & Jeremy arrived in second place. Ray
& Yolanda followed in third and had the winning golden gnome. Their
reward was a cruise on a private yacht around Sydney harbor, and a tour
of the Great Barrier Reef. Maybe more importantly, they got to spend
that night in a luxury hotel, apart from the Hippies and Frat Guys.

MoJo
arrived at the Pit Stop and learned that they had been eliminated from
the race. But, in a rare turn for racing couples unsure about their
future, Monica & Joseph said the experience cemented their
relationship, and they are now planning on getting married.

Next
week’s two-hour finale brings BJ & Tyler, Eric & Jeremy, and
Ray & Yolanda back to North America. The Hippies’ lead could easily
be erased at an airport, so it’s still anybody’s race.