MasnooeeLife
Masnooee Desk·74 stories this week·Updated This week

Life

Everyday money, family, home, faith — the journalism you actually use.

Edited by Aishath Shaneez · Life editor
GST 8%+Rf 42.80
Money · Everyday

A practical guide to the new GST rules on digital services — what you actually pay, what you don’t

The short version: most streaming services will add 8% from June. Remote work and consulting income is unaffected. Freelancers earning under Rf 1M/yr remain below the threshold.

9 min read · Updated today
Also in Life
01
Family
Eleven ways Male’ schools are helping families with the new uniform rules
02
Health
Ramazan-friendly exercise: what works, and when to skip it entirely
03
Home
How to survive the SW monsoon in a second-floor Male’ flat
04
Careers
Remote work from the Maldives: the visa, the taxes, the WiFi
All of Life
05
Money
Our annual guide to insuring a household in Male’ — what is worth it
3d ago·11 min read
06
Relationships
When adult children move home: the Maldivian family’s new quiet norm
5d ago·8 min read
07
Wellbeing
Sleep in a city that no longer turns off — eight tested strategies
1w ago·7 min read
08
Food
How to shop Rasfannu market without paying the tourist price
1w ago·5 min read
09
Education
What the new bilingual curriculum asks of parents (and doesn’t)
2w ago·6 min read
Monday, 27 April 2026 1447 · Dhu al-Qa‘dah 9Male' · 30°C · Southwest monsoon
Vol. XII · No. 3,204Male', Republic of MaldivesEst. 2014 · Print & Digital
Rf 15 · $1.0026 Atolls. One Paper.masnooee.mv
IndependentInvestigativeIsland-Born

Masnooee

Maldives·Uncovered
DhiriulhunLife & Style · formerly Dhuniye· the magazine, every fortnightIssue 18 · April 2026
Photo · Aminath Zoya18 April 2026
The Dhiriulhun Issue · 18 · Mango Season

The year every Male’ kitchen went back to the short-eats counter

Eight home cooks, one food critic, and a generation of office-lunch regulars are pulling mas huni, bajiya and gulha out of the freezer aisle — and back onto the morning tray.

— 01 · Food & Drink · Keumun

What’s on the tray this week

Recipes, pantry, short-eats
All food stories →
RihaakuruADDU · 180G
Recipe of the month

Mas huni, the way Dhon Beybe makes it on Saturdays

Smoked skipjack, fresh coconut, red onion, chilli. No shortcuts and no blender. A four-generation recipe from Hithadhoo, at last written down.

By Mariyam IbrahimBreakfast
15Minutes
4Serves
EasySkill
Pantry

Rihaakuru: a 60-day ferment finally on Instagram

The Maldivian anchovy paste has a new generation of fans — and a scandal about what goes into the mass-market jar.

5 min readFerment
Short eats

Bajiya two ways: Machangolhi’s and your grandmother’s

A crunchy, pleated, tuna-filled pastry, tested in five Male’ tea shops and one home kitchen.

5 min readTea-time
MoonimaaFRANGIPANI · 220G
Sweet

Foni boakibaa, the steamed coconut cake that wants nothing from you

Rice flour, palm sugar, coconut milk — steam until it smells like your aunt’s kitchen in Fonadhoo.

5 min readDessert
Drinks

The after-taraveeh kurumba, explained by four bartenders

Young coconut, lime, ginger, salt. A Ramadan-season classic, back year-round.

5 min readDrink
— 02 · Homes · Ge-daru

What a Male’ home looks like when the tourists go home with it

Three interior designers, one architect, and the carpenter of Villingili all agree on this: the best houses on the island stopped pretending to be resorts five years ago. Rattan stayed. Concrete softened. The lacquer came back.

“We spent a decade apologising for how we lived. Now the hotels are copying us.”

A walk-through of six homes, from a 120-year-old Addu cottage to a brand-new Hulhumalé duplex, and the crafts people who made them feel like Maldives again.

— 03 · Weddings · Kaiveni

Three weddings, three islands

Spring 2026 · 12-page special
Submit your wedding →
Baa atoll · Eydhafushi

Aishath & Ahmed, among the cowrie shells

A three-day kaiveni built around a great-grandmother’s mat, twenty hand-written invitations and a bouquet grown on the sandbank next door.

Male’ · Henveiru

A city hall wedding, and the pink sunset after

Two lawyers, forty minutes, eight witnesses — and a photographer who only works after 6pm.

Seenu · Hithadhoo

Sixty garudhiya bowls, and one borrowed aluminium pot

An Addu wedding menu, in its exact order, from the bodu mas to the last cup of kalho kahvaa at 4am.

— 04 · Wellness · Sihhath

Rest, the island way

Body · Mind · Moon-hours
The wellness letter →
Body

The 20-minute reef walk that five GPs now recommend over the gym

Low tide, bare feet, no phone. Thirty Male’ residents tried it for a month.

Food

Why Addu grandmothers drink hot water with coconut oil at 5am

And what four nutritionists think about it.

Sleep

Moon-hour lighting, translated for a studio flat in Henveiru

A practical how-to for renters with one bulb.

The jetty-yoga generation, and why their teacher moved back from Colombo

When Ayesha Rasheed left her Colombo studio in 2023, she thought she’d miss the city. Two years and four hundred students later, she teaches barefoot on the Hulhumalé jetty every sunrise — and has a waiting list you can measure in atolls.

A long read on the quiet boom in Maldivian home-grown wellness, the island spots that anchor it, and the question nobody is quite asking: what happens when the resorts want in?

Mind

A therapist’s guide to talking about loss in a Dhivehi household

Five phrases to retire, and five that open doors.

Ritual

The Friday night bath, with rihaa flowers and rose

A recipe from the late Fareeda Ali, as remembered by her three daughters.

Move

Open-water swimming without a club — five reef starts the locals trust

From Villingili channel to Dhuvaafaru reef.

— 05 · The Dhiriulhun Market · Baazaaru

Four objects, four islands

Edited by the Dhiriulhun desk · No affiliate links
RihaakuruADDU · 180G
Rihaakuru paste, 180g
Fahuma · Addu
Rf 95
Thundu kunaa · runner, 120cm
Gadhdhoo weavers
Rf 3,400
MoonimaaFRANGIPANI · 220G
Frangipani soy candle, 220g
Moonimaa · Male’
Rf 280
Hand-block sarong, ruby
Dhandi · Kulhudhuffushi
Rf 680
From the desk · Lekuma

On why we renamed this desk from Dhuniye to Dhiriulhun

For a long time the paper decided, privately and without saying so, that life-and-style was the part that happened between the real stories. When Parliament went home the pages came out. This year we stopped thinking like that. The short-eat counter at Sea House is a story. The rattan chair in your aunt’s Hulhumalé living room is a story. The way a Gadhdhoo grandmother teaches her niece to set up a loom — that is a story the Maldives is losing, if we don’t write it down.

When we launched, we called this desk Dhuniye— “the world” in Dhivehi — because we meant the small private one: the corner shop, the Friday lunch, the honeymoon you never took, the house you finally finished. Readers, kindly, told us the name was confusing. Dhuniye belongs to the World desk; this one is about how you live. So from this issue we are Dhiriulhun. Same magazine. Same editor. Clearer door. We will cover all of it — twice a month in print, every Saturday online, with a recipe and a recommendation in every issue.

Thank you for reading. Write to us at dhiriulhun@masnooee.mv (the old address will keep forwarding). Send photographs of your kitchen; we’ll print the ones we love.

— Mariyam Ibrahim
Editor, Dhiriulhun · April 2026