While we were recently in Bali we stumbled accross a Sunday Farmer's Market (Aussie style) out the front of Cafe Batu Jimbar in Sanur. One of the stalls was an Australian lady selling a variety of lovely Bali spices, coffee infused with vanilla, cinnamon smoked chilli amongst other gorgeous things...
She also had some packs of Balinese red rice for sale - which we queried her on (as to whether you could bring them home) and she replied yes, no probs, I do it all the time! So, we bought some and duly declared it at Sydney airport.
FYI for all - red rice is in fact a prohibited import and will be confiscated by Customs in Australia. Apparently it differs to other rice in that it is still able to germinate despite being dried etc...and poses a big risk to Australian rice crops.
I've also emailed the lady who was selling the rice to let her know, no that we lost heaps of money or anything, but I believe we should all be doing the right thing to protect Australia's crops and environment.
So, please don't buy any red rice and try to bring it home.
On the other hand, we also went to the Bali Orchid Garden (lovely!) and picked up a couple of flasks of orchid seedlings to take home and try our luck growing them at home. These are perfectly fine to bring back to Aus - but don't forget to declare them! We bought two flasks home (close to 60 seedlings!) and Customs looked at them and said they were fine.
If anything, we expected to keep the rice and lose the orchids! You just never know.
dutchnat and aussiedean