Fresh off a stint on Survivor: Blood vs Water, Khanh Ong admits The Bachelor is one reality TV show he just couldn’t sign up for.
“It sounds amazing, but I will be the man standing at the end with no one,” he tells Now To Love with a laugh.
“Because the gay Bachelor means that all the guys [in the mansion] are going probably fall in love with each other.”
He has a point; Holly and Millie from Brooke Blurton’s 2021 season found love on the show, despite both being there to date Brooke.
With that in mind, Khanh “really doesn’t want to be the gay Bachelor” and doesn’t even want to think about dating after a recent, awkward encounter at the gym that began with a SodaStream bottle, of all things.
“I took a bottle from my SodaStream DUO to the gym and there was another guy there who was so hot, so incredibly attractive and he had one too,” the 28-year-old recalls.
“And I was like, ‘Oh my god, you have a SodaStream, how much do you love it?’
“And he goes, ‘Yeah, I actually stole this bottle for my boyfriend’s house’. And I was like, ‘Ugh, great.'”
Dating 20 men at once on The Bachelor doesn’t sound very appealing to Khanh, but he knows what goes on behind the scenes thanks to Abbie Chatfield.
He and the former Bachelor contestant are thick as thieves, with Abbie often playing wing-woman and really “looking after” Khanh.
“I love Abbie so much. She is the biggest ball of fun and she’s such a supportive friend,” he says, adding that he’s “obsessed” with her and her new beau, Bachelorette alum Konrad Bien-Stephens.
“It’s sickening when I’m hanging out with them,” he laughs, “I’m like, ‘okay, cool, I get it. You’re together. Can you not make out in the middle of the street?'”
WATCH: Abbie Chatfield’s “relationship style” with Konrad Bien-Stephens. Story continues after video.
Abbie and Konrad are currently holidaying in Italy, where she sparked backlash for calling out the “sexist” Italian tradition where restaurants give women menus without prices.
But Khanh completely agrees with his pal, saying the outrage – and the tradition itself – “makes no sense”.
“I feel like there is this way of thinking in Europe where the man looks after everything, which I think is a really outdated way to look at it,” he explains.
“And I don’t think it’s fair, but it’s really funny that even away from a [TV] show, Abbie’s making headlines.”
Khanh has made a few headlines of his own recently, following his stint on Survivor with sister Amy, which he called a “bucket list” experience.
Though, he admits, there was one awkward moment that never made it to air from his first night on the show.
“Literally on day one, when the cameras were filming at night, I was like, ‘Okay, cool, so when do we get the sleeping bags?'” he reveals.
“And they’re [the producers] like, ‘There’s no sleeping bags‘. I was like, ‘What do you mean?'”
WATCH: Get to know Khanh Ong on Survivor. Story continues after video.
Though he was a little thrown off, Khanh committed to sleeping in the dirt – after all, he worked hard to get onto the show in the first place.
Unlike some celebrity contestants who were invited on the show, the former Masterchef star applied and went through the full screening process like any other “regular” contestant.
But when he got approved, he was unsure if Amy would agree to join him and even resorted to having his manager call her to set it up.
“I was scared and nervous, but then I thought it on it for an hour and I was like, ‘okay, I’ll do it,'” Amy says, though Khanh insists with a laugh that she’s lying and took much longer to agree.