ARTICLE
Beauty, Brain and Winners.
By Flora / 17 Dec 2016 (Saturday)
Photo Courtesy of: AXN Asia
Never underestimate the beauty queens. Borrowing the popular song from ‘Miss Congeniality’: ‘She’s beauty and she’s grace’, the beauty queens in this season’s ‘The Amazing Race Asia’ not only has beauty and grace; but brains and determination as well.
Not only did the Philippines beauty queens Parul and Maggie win the competition, Miss World Malaysia winners Chloe Chen and Lee Yvonne came in a close second; with another Philippines team, husband-wife pair Eric and Rona placing third of the race which concluded last Thursday.
Speaking to InCinemas, newly-minted winners Parul and Maggie shared that ‘life became different’ after the race ended.
“Everyday was a new adventure filled with so much adrenaline. When we woke up the morning after the race was over, we didn’t know what to do,” shared Maggie. “After the race, our lives just stopped.”
Parul said: “This season was dominated by the women! Even in the season finale, Eric was the last man standing… Definitely girl power!”
Photo Courtesy of: AXN Asia
“Winning the pageant is great, but winning The Amazing Race is even better because it’s a very fulfilling one. You know you’ve worked so hard for it every single day! It challenges you physically, mentally and emotionally… You realise a lot about yourself and your teammate and changes the perception of life. I look at things differently now,” added Maggie.
With the US$100,000 prize money, Parul wants to use it to help her ill father and family with the expenses.
“I knew my dad had a stroke before we entered the race, but little did we know that my dad had a second stroke during our race! And because we didn’t have any form of communication from home, we didn’t know of the situation. I only realised it after the entire race when I got home,” recalled Parul.
“With the money, I can help my father who lost his job because of the stroke, and my family with the medical expenses.”
As all the teams were sworn to secrecy, the ladies only celebrated quietly over at Maggie’s place in the Philippines.
“We celebrated over a glass of wine, no, actually a bottle of wine,” Parul quipped. “Every time when I go to her house, we will make sure no one else is there, and we will reminisce the times spent together.”
Photo Courtesy of: AXN Asia
The other pair of beauty queens - Chloe and Yvonne, similarly, would wake up an hour earlier before their call time to freshen up and make sure they looked good on camera, but for the Malaysian pair, the additional prep didn’t last that long.
Said Yvonne: “We will wake up about an hour before to do our makeup and look good, but towards the end of the race, we really didn’t care much. We even had mud all over our face!”
“Yvonne was very encouraging. There were many times in the morning when I didn’t want to put on any makeup, but she will tell me ‘Babe, it’s immortalised. Your face will be like that forever!” and the guilt-tripping worked,” added Chloe.
For those who missed this bubbly pair, Chloe and Yvonne shared that they will be updating their YouTube channel with their travel V-logs in times to come.