Anita's: Best Pizza in all of Asia

  Pulau Tioman ABC - Nazri I side, Malaysia
Friday, July 28, 2006

Even though I got to play DJ down at the Nazri II bar, I figured that I had had enough of the drama on that side of the island. That and Hikka had left as well. So I headed down to see what was on the other end of the beach. Here I found some of the best people I've met. Anita runs a Pizza shack, bar and restaurant down on this end and it is far and away the best pizza I've had in the last 9 months. It's a nice thin crust pizza with a fresh daily hand tossed crust, homemade tomato sauce, fresh ground mozzarella cheese and a variety of toppings including pepperoni. Get the Diabolo! I musta eaten 8 of these pizzas in a week. I basically hung out at her pizza shack the entire day whether she was open or not. Anita was a refreshing breath of fresh air, but had a habit of sleeping through lunch and opening sometime mid day as late as 3pm one day. The beach was nicer on this end and she had a nice shaded deck with pillows where I could lay out on, read and listen to my music. Her son, Haziq, was a lot of fun too. I gave him horseback rides and with my new found skills took him swimming and diving off piers. We spent our days goofing around and shooting monkeys that rummaged through the restaurant's garbage cans with his slingshot. I spent so much time down there that I almost became like one of the family watching after Haziq and his baby cousins. These were the kind of friendly locals I came to meet. Anita told me that she had never let Haziq go off to town with anyone else before especially not to the duty free shop.

One day while Lyn and I were hanging out recovering from the night before, she spotted someone that she thought would be good for me to meet. She went over and brought her back to hang out with us. I had planned with Anita's help that this was going to be my Muslim day where I wouldn't have any alcohol. It was going so well until she came over with a beer and asked if anyone wanted one. I have a slight weakness to this question in that the only answer that seems to come out of my mouth is in the affirmative. After about 6 beers, we decide to head back down to my side of the beach where I can DJ and play some good music we could dance to. Lyn had wandered off with what we thought were a couple, but we later found out were brother and sister...YOW. And the rest as they say is history.

The next day we found the duty free shop and bought a bottle of Johnny Walker for like almost no money. Duty free shops RULE! Over the next 5 days 6 or 7 of us managed to go through 15 bottles of alcohol including 3 1.75L bottles of Vodka. Some very strange things happened on this spirited island that I'm not sure I can talk about. What happens on the Island of Dr. Maru, stays on the island. Right Dylan, Tim, Joel and Clare? All I'll say is one of Haziq's questions to Tim was "you have pants today?" All I know is poor Anita said she'd never forget these guys and their antics. I think she needs to start saving for Haziq's psychiatric bills.