Jul 12
29
You may be familiar with the show The Amazing Race. In it, teams of travelers go around the world and complete challenges in exotic places.
Ideally these tasks are reflective of how quickly a traveler can adapt to a new culture. But sometimes it can get a little silly – more like an obstacle course than a representation of street savvy. For instance, in Hong Kong, one challenge was to pick out real sushi from plastic ones.
What would make the show better is if the challenge was to see how fast a foreigner could completely integrate into their new environment. What if they had three days to gain insider knowledge of the city that only longtime residents knew?
For instance, you drop the team off in Moscow in the winter, and give them 12 hours to slide down the best tobogganing hill in the city. Another challenge could be to eat a slice of pizza with a crust punk in Montreal. Explore the scariest haunted house in Detroit. Or drink snake blood in Taipei.
The entertaining part would be watching the contestants run through the city, talking to people, and trying to find someone who had lived in the city long enough to know such random facts.
Taking out the city hosts would also add to the grittiness of the show. The teams would be followed by one cameraman, and that would be it. There would be a lot more bumbling in reality than the format they currently have.
If this show existed, Mattress Choice could be a sponsor. It would be a good ending for each episode, if the exhausted contestants collapsed on a Beautyrest and fell instantly asleep.