This article tells us even more, this one from the perspective of a reporter who was there with them.
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/07/08/amazing-race-canada-behind-the-scenes-with-an-exclusive-set-visit-to-vietnam'Amazing Race Canada': Behind the scenes with a set visit to Vietnam
As The Amazing Race Canada heads to Vietnam, we go on set as contestants are 'pushed to their physical limits' like never before
jim-slotek
By Jim Slotek, Postmedia Network
CAE BE, Vietnam – As our water taxi nears a bend on the Mekong River – a discreet distance from the nine remaining teams on The Amazing Race Canada – the carcass of a large, freshly-slaughtered pig floats by.
In another era, a war correspondent could have worked up a metaphor out of that grisly bit of flotsam. But the war that gripped a generation is but the stuff of sombre museums in Vietnam these days.
The dead hog is merely one that got away from the floating markets and “wet market” that lie ahead. Pork and chicken are the staples westerners would recognize as food.
Absent from that list would be rats (sold live in cages to be deep-fried later), toads (ditto) and various insects.
Not that the flight-weary contestants are being asked to eat anything sketchy in the Vietnam episode that airs on CTV, Tuesday, July 12 – yet.
They’ve just arrived, dazed, in the Mekong Delta from Calgary via Hong Kong and Ho Chi Minh City (word from the production team is that Emmett Blois, who is racing with his ex-girlfriend, Big Brother Canada champ Jillian MacLaughlin, left the plane announcing how happy she was to be in Thailand. Now THAT’s lost).
One team has already found itself in the wrong village en route. Another would take a wrong turn looking for a duck farm, taking them – and the cameramen – several kilometers off course on foot in 39-degree heat.
Ah, the heat. This is the third year in a row The Amazing Race Canada has stepped outside our borders, and the second in a row in which Canadians have been exposed to the kind of temperatures they’d normally only experience bent over a barbecue.
Last year, in Kolkata and Delhi, the contestants raced in 44 C heat that actually resulted in thousands of deaths nationwide. But The Amazing Race Canada competition in those huge Indian cities was largely by taxi and tuk-tuk. There are no cabs to speak of in dusty Cae Be, and most of the challenges are arrived at on foot.
Which is bad news for the crew that follows Woodbridge single-moms Anne Morrone and Tanya Muzzatti, who arrived in Vietnam already tagged as the team with the worst sense of direction. “We were in Jasper. We had a challenge in the park. They drove right out of the park and practically ended up in Edmonton. It was insane,” says TARC executive producer John Brunton.
On this day, one of Anne and Tanya’s cameramen will be treated for heat prostration. “They damn near killed him,” Brunton says. “They’re running, not having a clue what direction they were going. The guys have 25-30 pound cameras. They are the two most fit cameramen that we have. Cardio fit.”
And then there’s the language barrier. Brunton insists this anecdote is true. His team tried to be better prepared for Vietnam than they were for India, and asked that there be “electrolytes” along with water at each Roadblock. The crew arrived to find boxes of electric lights at each stop.
And before the end of the day, the heat would take its toll, not just on the crew, but crucially on a team.
(Those of us along for the trip who were not required to run from place to place have comparatively nothing to complain about. But as an aside, my room in Cae Be had noisy lizards in it, and mosquito netting over your bed was a nighttime requirement).
I ask host Jon Montgomery if he’s learned anything between India and Vietnam. “I’ve learned I’m a ginger and don’t do well in the heat,” he says. “I learned nothing else in terms of coping with it. It’s stultifying. I can appreciate how nothing gets done midday in countries like this, because you just cannot work, man. It’s physically impossible.”
But he says watching Canadians in extreme heat has turned out to be a brilliant programming stroke. “It’s fish-out-of-water excitement,” he says. “You’re watching people who are unused to this heat try to keep their wits about them, think flexibly, work together, communicate, all while being pushed to their physical limits. It’s bananas.”
At least one of the teams, though, seemed to find their stride in the world’s rice basket (paddies along the Mekong provide one-fifth of all the rice in the world).
Pint-sized fitness instructors Kelly Xu and Kate Pan are still in the race by the skin of their teeth, having avoided elimination in Banff by mere minutes and coming in last in Calgary in what happily turned out to be a non-elimination leg.
“The previous two legs, it was in the mountains and it was cold. We don’t perform well in the cold,” Xu said. And as the Mekong race started, they fairly sailed through the soggy shopping list contestants were given as they browsed boat-to-boat through the floating market. “Shopping’s something we’re good at because we’re girls,” Pan added. “We had to shop for fermented bean curd. We have it in our culture too, little cubes. But we call it Chinese Cheese.”
But back to the four-legged foodstuffs. Though they didn’t have to eat anything on this day, the contestants did have to interact with animals in the Mekong. A squeamish Kelly and Kate had to deliver a basket of live toads, hand-picked as their make-good for avoiding elimination in the previous leg.
And at one Roadblock, contestants had to herd a specific number of ducks into a pen. A few, however, expressed remorse about where the ducks were ultimately headed (Vietnamese eat about 30 million ducks a year).
“One of them was just relaxing in my arms, then I realized where he was going and I felt kind of traumatized,” says Ashley Callingbull, the First Nations activist and reigning Mrs. Universe who is teamed with her stepdad Joel Ground.
Adds Amy Gassler, of the mother/daughter team of Frankie and Amy, “When I realized we were taking them to where they were going to be killed, it was just heartbreaking. It was so sad. We should have just bought them.”
In a pre-season scouting trip, Brunton says, he actually tried the deep-fried toads while trekking through the jungle. Were they good? “Hey, anything that’s deep-fried is good,” he says.
“My sense between India and Vietnam is that Vietnam also has a great deal of poverty. But I haven’t seen anybody who looks underfed or malnourished. I couldn’t say the same of India,” he continues.
“I came here scouting and the Mekong Delta has that enduring feeling of history and tradition – that it was a highway that fed people for centuries.”
Since TARC became an international affair, some Canadian connection has always been proffered. Brunton notes one that’s still relevant today. During the era of the post-war “boat people,” Canada took in 75,000 Vietnamese refugees.
“You look at what’s happening in the U.S., with refugees in general and the targeting of specific religions,” Brunton says. “Donald Trump is running around saying he’ll close the borders to refugees. I’m proud of the fact that we took in refugees then, and that we’ve got a government that says we can take in more.”
“I think our country has been transformed in a great way by the Vietnamese and other people who call Canada home because they were welcomed.”
The Amazing Race Canada airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on CTV and CTV GO.
