The Amazing Race Asia 5

The Amazing Race Asia 5 is the fifth season of The Amazing Race Asia, an Asian reality competition show based on the American series The Amazing Race. It returned after a 6-year hiatus and featured eleven teams of two for the first time in the Asia's version of franchise, each with a pre-existing relationship, in a race across Southeast Asia to win US$100,000.
This season visited in the entirety of Southeast Asia travelled over 12,000 kilometres (7,500 mi) during ten legs. Starting in Jakarta, teams travelled across Indonesia, alongside Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, before returning to Indonesia in the last three legs. The season premiered on AXN Asia on 13 October 2016, and the finale aired on 15 December 2016.
Allan Wu returned to host his fifth season of The Amazing Race Asia and eleventh season of The Amazing Race franchise overall. Wu was paired up with Tara Basro, an Indonesian film actress in hosting this season while in Indonesia.
Beauty queens Parul Shah and Maggie Wilson from the Philippines were the winners of this season, marking the Philippines's second consecutive win in The Amazing Race Asia, while fellow beauty queens Yvonne Lee and Chloe Chen from Malaysia finished second and Philippine married couple Eric and Rona Tai finished third.
On 20 May 2016, Sony Pictures Television (SPT) Networks Asia announced that The Amazing Race Asia would return for its fifth season after a six-year long hiatus and would be broadcast by AXN Asia. The tagline for this season was "most adrenaline-fueled season ever". This season adopted the American-style title sequence (based on Season 23). The Minister of Tourism of Indonesia, Arief Yahya, revealed the season's destinations beginning in Jakarta and traveling to local Indonesian destinations along with Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila before finishing in Bali. There was a planned visit to Taipei, Taiwan, but it was scrapped last minute and was replaced by the Phuket, Thailand leg. This season covered 12,000 km (7,500 mi), the shortest route of The Amazing Race Asia, and mostly focused the competition in Indonesia, where the Starting Line and the Finish Line were held (the first time since Season 3 to do so in the same country, although the Starting Line and Finish Line were located in different cities), with the remaining countries in Southeast Asia.
Though both Wu and Basro were present at the Starting Line, Indonesian Deputy Minister for International Tourism Marketing I Gede Pitana officially flagged the teams off. This was the first time in any edition worldwide that the host did not officially signal the start of the competition. Pitana also appeared at the Finish Line as a greeter. In other legs conducted in Indonesia, Basro would take the place of the greeter.
This season introduced a new twist: the Speed Bump. Similar to the American version, the team that placed last in the non-elimination leg had to perform a Speed Bump somewhere in the next leg before they could continue racing. This season also for the first time in The Amazing Race Asia featured 11 teams, which the number 11th teams were eliminated at the starting line task (same as Season 15 of the American version and Season 3 of China Rush). Unlike the first leg in Season 15 of the American version and the first leg of Season 3 of China Rush, both in which the last team that arrived at the Pit Stop was told that it was a non-elimination leg, this version's first leg also ended with a standard end-of-leg elimination.
This season was also the first time in The Amazing Race Asia that a U-Turn board was placed at the Detour decision point, during Leg 9, rather than after the Detour itself (the first time this twist was introduced in all franchises was in the tenth leg of the 27th American version). Leg 9 is also the first leg in all franchises of The Amazing Race where both Yield and U-Turn were present in the same leg.
Casting began on 23 May 2016, and applications were closed on 30 June 2016 (18 days extended from the original deadline of 12 June 2016).
Wonderful Indonesia, Grab, Garuda Indonesia, and Great Eastern Life were sponsors for the season. It was also the first season that was not sponsored by Sony or Caltex.
The list of teams with their relationships at the time of filming were announced on 28 July 2016 on the AXN website. Continuing the casting trend of the Asian franchise, the cast once again consisted of numerous local celebrities or their relatives including 87.6 Hard Rock FM radio announcer Vicky Harahap, Philippines national rugby union team member and host of It's Showtime Eric Tai, Miss Grand International 2015 Parul Shah and Miss Philippines World 2007 Maggie Wilson, Miss Malaysia World 2011 Chloe Chen and Miss Malaysia World 2012 Yvonne Lee, The 8TV Quickie host Brandon Ho, News One Prime Time news anchor Louisa Kusnandar, Power 98 Radio DJs Jerald Justin "JK" Ko & Michael "Mike" Tan, and "UMeAndHara" YouTuber Rei Umehara. Tai is the only non-Asian contestant in the entire season.
This is the first season not to feature a team from Hong Kong, but also the first with a Vietnamese team.
Yvonne Lee was seen dating host Allan Wu after the show.
The following teams are listed with their placements in each leg. Placements are listed in finishing order.
The premiere episode was the best performing English Original Production (OP) in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines in 2016. It also posted 26% and 33% increases in Singapore and Malaysia, respectively, over 2015's record-breaking Asia's Got Talent, putting the series on track to become the most watched English OP ever in Asia.