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ETIQUETTE We generally ended by exehanging brocades, krisses, and so forth for pieces of silk, flashlights, and fountain pens. The Balinese are very much concerned with the price paid for an object, and they always insisted on knowing what we paid for a present, until we realized that it was a great mistake to remove the price tags. When we bought new glasses or new plates, Dog, our house-boy, washed them carefully around the label so as not to rub off the price. It is necessary to be properly dressed to pay or to reccive a visit. The breasts of men and women should be covered by a special breast-cloth, a saput for men and a selendang for women. People in the house always dashed for their breast-cloth, usually an ordinary foreign towel, when a special guest arrived. Immediately the visitor was provided with green coconuts to quench his thirst, with cigarettes and betel-nut. Up-to-date Balinese like to offer soda-pop, coffee and Chinese pastries. The chewing of betel-nut is the first gesture of hospitality and the main social pastime of the entire archipelago. To chew betel, a piece of the green nut of the betel palm is dabbed with a little lime, wrapped in pepper leaves, sirih, and the whole chewed together with a large wad of shredded tobacco that is held under a monstrously protruding lower lip. The combination of betel, sirih, and lime produces an abundant flow of saliva, red as blood, and the betel Addict spits constantly, leaving crimson splotches wherever he goes. After certain guests departed, our house-boy always had to wash the veranda steps because they looked as if a murder had cen committed on them. Today betel-chewing
is not favoured the younger generation, not only because it looks so
disagreehle, but because it spoils the teeth. The older the person,
the fonder he is of betel, and the ingredients are always kept on hand
hoxes with little compartments or in special satchels of woven indanus.
Old men without teeth have a special bamboo tube with an iron rod to
mash the various ingredients together. The sirih, betel, and lime are
presented to guests in little ready-made packages often beautifully
decorated with streamers of delicately cut-out palm-leaf. They are called
,tjanang or baseh, a gift.
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