Reminds me of my father <\/em><\/p>\n When he had fallen in love with death <\/em><\/p>\n One time when sheaves were gathered\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n (Patrick Kavanagh, \u201cMemory of my Father\u201d)<\/p>\n Some scars are scarier than others. I\u2019m looking at the defining mark of this story. It runs from the Oracle\u2019s earlobe to his cheekbone like a crooked question mark and rings too many deafening bells.<\/p>\n Every old man I see reminds me of my father, although this one could be my fluid Darth Mother.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw you and your scar in a dream,\u201d<\/em> I confess undaunted.<\/p>\n The white of his eyes evaporates as fast as the cicatrix, and then his blue pupils\u2019 turn and shine like the thawing of the poles, crazy blue melted diamonds.<\/p>\n 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:<\/p>\n \u201cLife is too short for explanations. I\u2019m 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\u2019t”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cClear the shore is way more imperative than my pain. Count me in\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cGood man. Scared of my scar?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cJust curious.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSo what happened in the dream?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt was like the first scene of Kill Bill: you sent four mercenaries to your own wedding to kill your wife.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cVery accurate.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI was Uma Thurman. You were David Carradine.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWell, I can only hope I wasn\u2019t marrying you, son.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBetter just only hope that I\u2019m not Uma.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYou are not.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Fast-forward ten minutes and the Oracle says, \u201cthis is Bananas!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The Oracle seems unimpressed with my hiding skills.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a PTSD thing with sub-fusils since the dream with you in it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cNo, it\u2019s Bananas!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Fair enough, bananas are always preferable than guns.<\/p>\n \u201cHarper, come here, this is Bananas.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I thought my name was Wilson, but Harper sounds way better, kind of bananas actually.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on,\u201d<\/em> I ask, as puzzled as every other day.<\/p>\n \u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n We sound like the comic branch of a publishing house.<\/p>\n I ask what he collects. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMy pleasure,\u201d<\/em> I say, still unaware of the hell lying ahead of us.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s a massage parlour next to the shrine and the mother who runs it asks me if I\u2019d like to have one, before the Oracle intervenes.<\/p>\n \u201cHarper, pack something for two nights. We are leaving in five minutes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n As soon as we leave, the Oracle says that we will be there within the hour, and Bananas gets the said call on Zoom.<\/p>\n Then he starts shouting. \u201cMY HEADPHONES AREN\u2019T WORKING: I\u2019LL USE THE LOUDSPEAKER.\u201d<\/em> And just like that, the SUV turns into a Karaoke of shouting voices discussing marketing strategies and profits that sound immediately stroke inducing.<\/p>\n I take out my own headphones, offer them to him, but Bananas shakes his head.<\/p>\n It is too late, which is Hell\u2019s favourite time to manifest itself. And it does.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n This is what psychotic breaks and Guantanamo chambers are made of.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n The sunshine is grilling the ocean and the Oracle is eating peanuts and reading Into the Silence<\/i>, while Bananas keep punishing us with the sausage choir.<\/p>\n I ask the wise man how he can read under such acoustic shelling. \u201cWith peanuts and love. Plus I have been living here for over twenty years, so I can take in two karaoke\u2019s simultaneously while I keep reading Wade Davis.\u201d<\/p>\n We discuss One River<\/i>, my favourite Davis\u2019 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. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n My mouth opens like a perfect zero. The silence is prodigal. And then Bananas voice takes over:<\/p>\n \u201cThe texture of the sausage is like banana pudding.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The Oracle smiles as sly as a fox.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019Banana pudding\u2019 is the title of a song by Southern Culture on the Skids, remember? I used to listen to them while growing plants in Morocco,\u201d<\/em> says the Oracle<\/p>\n This is a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu moment\u2014if I could only remember.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t become a lecturer but a convict \u2014in Morocco.<\/p>\n The d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu intensifies and dizziness overtakes when the driver says.<\/p>\n \u201cCh\u00fang t\u00f4i \u0111\u00e3 \u0111\u1ebfn.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/em>(\u201cWe have arrived.\u201d<\/em>)<\/p>\n I ask if this is Peanut Island and the Oracle asks: \u201cHave you ever got into an island by car and without bridges?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n He sounds like Buddhism on amphetamines. I feel increasingly lightheaded.<\/p>\n Getting into the island will take two speedboats. The ocean is furious and the speedboat very scared \u2014let alone its passengers.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cstop 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll call you Peanuts, what about that?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n 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 N\u00f3n l\u00e1, the Vietnamese hat, and smiling wider than the Eightfold path.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 says, \u201cThese eight women are commanding the Peanut and Garlic operation on the island.\u201d<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Thau\u2019s mother has cooked the most delicious seafood chowder ever tasted.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could potentially become the peace pipe for Humanity,\u201d<\/em> says Bananas. The super mothers table bursts out laughing, tears of joy flowing like dolphins in swim.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Our adoptive mothers and daughters go back to pile up peanuts and pack more garlic. The whole place smells like a Bigas Luna movie.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are old buoys,\u201d<\/em> says Peanuts. And then looks at Banana\u2019s and says it:<\/p>\n \u201cThis is gold. I love it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Peanuts says the title of the art piece is \u201cFreedom for the Penguins,\u201d<\/em> some polar statement in the Tropics. The mouth of the mammal hangs against the trunk with a wide open mouth that shouts: \u201cI\u2019m not a rubbish bin anymore: FREEDOM FOR THE PENGUINS!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n And this is it.<\/p>\n There are places that you won\u2019t 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\u2019d visit Be Eco lodge, Th\u1ea5u\u2019s unbelievable paradise.<\/p>\nNow Here, Hoian, April 2025<\/b><\/h4>\n
Peanut Island<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/em><\/p>\nBananas<\/b><\/b><\/h4>\n
If you say so<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/b><\/h4>\nSUV<\/b><\/h4>\n
Southwards<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/b><\/h4>\nBanana Break<\/b><\/h4>\n
D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu<\/b><\/h4>\n
Remember D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu?<\/b><\/h4>\n
Speedboat<\/b><\/h4>\n
The Loving Eight<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/b><\/h4>\nRecycling Lunch<\/b><\/h4>\n
Chowder as a Peace Pipe<\/b><\/h4>\n
Blue Fish<\/b><\/h4>\n
Plastic Shore<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/b><\/h4>\nThe Installation<\/b><\/h4>\n