NOWHERE-NOW HERE, HECTOR CASTELLS TRAVEL JOURNAL – CAPSULE XVII

PEANUTS AND BANANAS

“Every old man I see

Reminds me of my father

When he had fallen in love with death

One time when sheaves were gathered” 

(Patrick Kavanagh, “Memory of my Father”)

Now Here, Hoian, April 2025

Some scars are scarier than others. I’m looking at the defining mark of this story. It runs from the Oracle’s earlobe to his cheekbone like a crooked question mark and rings too many deafening bells.

Every old man I see reminds me of my father, although this one could be my fluid Darth Mother.

The Oracle crosses himself with his left hand, and the corrugated tissue on his cheekbone shines and vanishes like the trail of a shooting star.

“I saw you and your scar in a dream,” I confess undaunted.

The white of his eyes evaporates as fast as the cicatrix, and then his blue pupils’ turn and shine like the thawing of the poles, crazy blue melted diamonds.

Peanut Island

He uses his laser glance to pierce mine, the standoff going for what feels like an eternity, even though it only lasts ten seconds, until he starts giving orders to the guardian of the shrine and to the old lady who has brought me here. My eyes are burning when he says:

“Life is too short for explanations. I’m proud of my scar, but right now I have a mission to attend to: clear the waste from the shore of Peanut-Garlic Island. My wholesome mothers and daughters will join. I would invite you to do so, but since your right knee is damaged, I assume you won’t”

“Clear the shore is way more imperative than my pain. Count me in”

“Good man. Scared of my scar?”

“Just curious.”

“So what happened in the dream?”

“It was like the first scene of Kill Bill: you sent four mercenaries to your own wedding to kill your wife.”

“Very accurate.”

“I was Uma Thurman. You were David Carradine.”

“Well, I can only hope I wasn’t marrying you, son.”

“Better just only hope that I’m not Uma.”

“You are not.”

Bananas

Fast-forward ten minutes and the Oracle says, “this is Bananas!”

A big bloke on a massive bike pulls in, huge helmet on. I remember the dream and its four mercenaries, so I slide back and go undercover.

“What are you doing?”

The Oracle seems unimpressed with my hiding skills.

“I have a PTSD thing with sub-fusils since the dream with you in it.”

“No, it’s Bananas!”

If you say so

Fair enough, bananas are always preferable than guns.

“Harper, come here, this is Bananas.”

I thought my name was Wilson, but Harper sounds way better, kind of bananas actually.

“What’s going on,” I ask, as puzzled as every other day.

“He is Andrew. We call him Bananas. He is coming to Peanut Island. He is a recycling artist and professional collector. Just wanted to introduce you: Bananas, Harper; Harper, Bananas.”

We sound like the comic branch of a publishing house.

I ask what he collects. “I just collected and delivered thirty kilos of spicy sausages, and I have a call right now with the board of shareholders: nice to meet you, soon Harper.”

“My pleasure,” I say, still unaware of the hell lying ahead of us.

SUV

Two minutes later an SUV pulls in. The shrine is at the end of a dirt road, and the trail of dust looks inauspicious, more toxic than cinematic. There’s a massage parlour next to the shrine and the mother who runs it asks me if I’d like to have one, before the Oracle intervenes.

“Harper, pack something for two nights. We are leaving in five minutes.”

Southwards

As soon as we leave, the Oracle says that we will be there within the hour, and Bananas gets the said call on Zoom.

Then he starts shouting. “MY HEADPHONES AREN’T WORKING: I’LL USE THE LOUDSPEAKER.” And just like that, the SUV turns into a Karaoke of shouting voices discussing marketing strategies and profits that sound immediately stroke inducing.

I take out my own headphones, offer them to him, but Bananas shakes his head.

It is too late, which is Hell’s favourite time to manifest itself. And it does.

It is a very long hour lasting 180 minutes. The Oracle predictably says that time is relative and I frantically fail to make my headphones work.

This is what psychotic breaks and Guantanamo chambers are made of.

Banana Break

Bananas spends the longest hour of our waking lives with his hellish device pointed at us. The Sausage Board of Directors is a pudding of onomatopoetic and spiky wails in four different languages. The voices pierce eyes, eardrums, asphalt and sanity.

Outside the window, the Eightfold Driving Way is in full bloom: drivers are coming from any conceivable angle, just like the hundred kids, dogs and water-buffalo’s merging onto the highway as if they were squatting in their living room. Meanwhile, fruit and vegetable markets burgeon like miracles on the ditch, where dozens of locals are heaping up all sorts of goodies. Loaves and fishes must be proud.

The sunshine is grilling the ocean and the Oracle is eating peanuts and reading Into the Silence, while Bananas keep punishing us with the sausage choir.

Déjà Vu

I ask the wise man how he can read under such acoustic shelling. “With peanuts and love. Plus I have been living here for over twenty years, so I can take in two karaoke’s simultaneously while I keep reading Wade Davis.”

We discuss One River, my favourite Davis’ book, a brilliant essay and mind-blowing portrait of the Godfather and Grandmother of Ethnobotanical Science, Richard Evans Schulze. He knows a lot about him, and claims that they met in Colombia in 1974. “I provided the powder and the strategy, and he supplied the knowledge. Richard found over ten thousand new types of plants by himself. He was insane, like Burroughs without Heroine.”

Remember Déjà Vu?

My mouth opens like a perfect zero. The silence is prodigal. And then Bananas voice takes over:

“The texture of the sausage is like banana pudding.”

The Oracle smiles as sly as a fox.

“’Banana pudding’ is the title of a song by Southern Culture on the Skids, remember? I used to listen to them while growing plants in Morocco,” says the Oracle

This is a déjà vu moment—if I could only remember.

Next thing he mentions that he was caught a few times growing the same plants that Richard Evans spent his whole life researching. Unlike Evans, though, the Oracle didn’t become a lecturer but a convict —in Morocco.

The déjà vu intensifies and dizziness overtakes when the driver says.

“Chúng tôi đã đến.”  (“We have arrived.”)

I ask if this is Peanut Island and the Oracle asks: “Have you ever got into an island by car and without bridges?”

He sounds like Buddhism on amphetamines. I feel increasingly lightheaded.

Speedboat

Getting into the island will take two speedboats. The ocean is furious and the speedboat very scared —let alone its passengers.

I spend the next hour sitting next to a kid throwing up and crying non-stop, so the brief hour also feels like a 180-minute torture. The plastic bag is empty of vomit and his eyes only shed crocodile tears. The Oracle says “stop thinking nasty things, he is just a scared kid. Eat some peanuts and stop calling me Oracle, it sounds like a part of the ear.”

“I’ll call you Peanuts, what about that?”

The Loving Eight

He laughs and then the vomit and the crying stop: we have arrived! I look out the window and I see them: the four mothers and daughters are on the edge of the deck, all sporting the proverbial Nón lá, the Vietnamese hat, and smiling wider than the Eightfold path.

Thau is the first to greet us. She is wearing a suit jacket, Ralph Lauren striped shirt, shorts and sandals, and introduces us to her sisters and aunties. Peanuts’ says, “These eight women are commanding the Peanut and Garlic operation on the island.” The eight powerhouses welcome Peanut and Bananas effusively. There is joy and wonder in their faces, the stunning and crispy volcanic soil and the palm trees glowing like a painless future beyond them.

Recycling Lunch

It takes a mere five-minute walk from the dock to get to our stunning lodgement, and the way reveals the incredible abundance of garlic and peanuts in the island. There are heaps and blankets full of them in every courtyard, in the entrance of the local hospital, and in every second house, and dozens of villagers transporting them on the back and the sides of their bikes like tiny, stuffed, weeping willows. This is ethnobotanicals on steroids.

Chowder as a Peace Pipe

Thau’s mother has cooked the most delicious seafood chowder ever tasted.

“It could potentially become the peace pipe for Humanity,” says Bananas. The super mothers table bursts out laughing, tears of joy flowing like dolphins in swim.

Blue Fish

We also devoured the mouth-blowing Blue Bone Fish: its spine is turquoise and the meat tender and crispy. We are all on our fours saying thanks.

We retrieve our dignity after the coffee: it is time to work. Peanuts and Bananas order me to grab the same massive bowl they are also carrying, and follow them to the beach.

Our adoptive mothers and daughters go back to pile up peanuts and pack more garlic. The whole place smells like a Bigas Luna movie.

Plastic Shore

The shore is right in front of the lodgement and it is the closest to a volcanic paradise beach that you could imagine, except for the tons of plastic ruthlessly spitted by the waves.

We pick up an insane amount of bottles, wraps, bags of crisps, jackhammers, glasses, cans, milk cartons, two steel penguins formerly used as rubbish bins, washing powder tubs, and about twenty enormous bottles of a psychedelic range of colours.

“They are old buoys,” says Peanuts. And then looks at Banana’s and says it:

“This is gold. I love it.”

The Installation

After clearing up the shore, Peanuts and Bananas meet a couple of activists from Surinam, Eva and Lia, and we decide to keep sweeping the terrorised shore while the mothers keep turning the fishes into miracles.

Peanuts says that we must turn this into an art installation, and everyone agrees. So we will spend the next 48 hours collecting and curating waste, until the Plastic Tree comes to life. Wasted disposed and waving from its branches like the dream of a bubble that escaped the flute glass and reached the sky.

Peanuts says the title of the art piece is “Freedom for the Penguins,” some polar statement in the Tropics. The mouth of the mammal hangs against the trunk with a wide open mouth that shouts: “I’m not a rubbish bin anymore: FREEDOM FOR THE PENGUINS!”

And this is it.

There are places that you won’t ever come back from, and that you would never share with anyone but your loved ones. Nonetheless, if you find yourself in the tiniest island off Ly Son, make sure you’d visit Be Eco lodge, Thấu’s unbelievable paradise.