Wat Hongsaram

What the official record says

Where Wat Hongsaram is

When was it founded — and what actually establishes that?

Thai temple histories mix two different kinds of statement, and this guide keeps them apart. What a register, a gazette entry, an inscription or a dated royal act shows is one thing. What the chronicles and the temple itself hold is another, and it is worth telling as what it is.

The B.E. 2200 date rests on a religious-affairs compilation with no instrument behind it and is the weakest claim on this page; the inscription above the kuti door is the strongest, and the two are nearly two and a half centuries apart. The department's own survey form for this monument is titled ตำบลท่าข้าม อำเภอปะนาเระ จังหวัดสงขลา, naming the wrong province; the gazette instrument and the register both put it in Pattani.

The history of Wat Hongsaram

The village names around Wat Hongsaram are the best introduction to it. Ban Tat Hong, Ban Nong Hong — the neck of the hamsa, the shin of the hamsa. The register explains why: an abbot called Luang Pho Daeng Inthawangso looked at the lie of the land, decided the whole area read as one enormous hamsa, renamed the monastery Wat Hongsaram, and the hamsa has been the emblem of the temple and the villages round it ever since. Before that it had been Wat Tha Kham, the monastery at the crossing, a name given by a visiting senior monk from Nakhon Si Thammarat who asked after its history during a rains retreat and found that nobody could tell him any. Before even that, an inscription inside it calls the place Wat Mai Mueang Yiring — the new monastery of Yiring town, from the years when this coast was one of the seven Malay towns.

That inscription is the reason this monastery is a registered national monument. It is fixed above the door of the second room inside the twin kuti, written in Thai of the fifth and sixth reigns, and it is not a dedication but an account. It records that the building was begun with timber under Palat Nu in the Year of the Ox, B.E. 2431; that the floor was laid and then the work stopped when Palat Nu died; that Phra Palat Su, who ran the Yiring ecclesiastical district, took it up with the monks and the lay supporters, added a cross wing on the west side in the Year of the Rabbit, B.E. 2433, laid the outer veranda floor, and bought the paint, brick, lime and tiles — including what was owed from Palat Nu's time — for 95 rian in all; and that the building was finished and celebrated in B.E. 2437. A southern village monastery that wrote down its own construction budget on the wall and still has it is rare, and it dates the building to the year without depending on anyone's memory.

Against that, the department also carries a history from the Department of Religious Affairs saying the monastery was built from B.E. 2200 and that Dhammayut monks came around B.E. 2445. The second of those is useful: Wat Hongsaram is a Dhammayuttika monastery, which in this guide is unusual outside Bangkok, and the arrival of the reform order in a Panare village around the turn of the twentieth century is itself a piece of southern religious history. The first is the weakest claim on the page and is reported as what it is — a compilation date with no instrument behind it, two and a half centuries older than the one thing here that is actually dated.

The monastery was registered in January B.E. 2566 with a protected area of 8 rai 1 ngan 62 square wa, and the instrument was signed a year and a half before it was published. The department's current condition line for the monument is one phrase long: มีสภาพทรุดโทรม, in a poor state. The painted kuti is still in use as monks' quarters. The murals that matter most are not on a wall at all but on the ceiling of the pa lai roof that links the twin house to the west wing, which is exactly the sort of place rain gets to first.

What you actually see

The twin kuti: a raised single-story Thai timber house on a rectangular plan, three bays by seven, about 9.4 by 13.4 meters, running east–west and facing south, with four rooms off a central hall, the innermost hall holding Buddha images and the middle one used for ceremonies between monks and laypeople. The boarded floor is laid at descending levels from the rooms through the halls to the veranda.

The paintings on the ceiling of the pa lai that connects the twin house to the west wing — the reason the department lists this kuti first among the monument's buildings, and the most vulnerable thing on the site.

The inscription above the door of the second room, in Thai of the fifth and sixth reigns, giving the building's own construction account: begun under Palat Nu in B.E. 2431, carried on by Phra Palat Su, west wing added in B.E. 2433, completed in B.E. 2437, with 95 rian recorded for tiles, brick, lime and paint.

The timber detail of the house: panelled walls painted orange-red inside and out, inward-opening paired window shutters with wooden grilles, nang charat posts carrying the eaves skirt along the wall line, a gutter where the twin gables meet, and every post standing on a tall cast concrete footing — a tin ao, the southern answer to termites and damp.

The sala kan parian west of the kuti, 9.20 by 13.00 meters, timber on lime post-footings with horizontal lapped boarding and a clay-tile roof; two further kuti to the north, one of them with B.E. 2490 recorded on its gable; the raised two-level kitchen; and a small timber sala 3.00 by 4.40 meters beside it.

The family resemblance the department itself points out: the structure and detailing of this twin kuti are close to the monks' quarters at Wat Khuan Nai in the same district, which is a second registered monument a short drive away.

Visiting: hours, admission, dress and photography

This is a working place of worship for millions of people rather than an attraction, and it is treated as one at the gate. Where a figure below is blank, no source we are prepared to cite states it.

What we could not establish

Every temple reference repeats claims nobody has checked. These are the ones we went looking for and could not stand up, listed so you know exactly where this page stops.

• Anything behind the B.E. 2200 building date. It reaches the register through a Department of Religious Affairs history with no instrument named, and nothing else on the site supports it.
• Who painted the pa lai ceiling and when. The department lists the paintings as the kuti's primary significance and records no painter, no date and no subject list for them.
• Why the department's own survey form for this monument is titled จังหวัดสงขลา. The gazette instrument and the register both place Wat Hongsaram in Pattani, and the survey title names the wrong province.
• The eighteen-month gap between signature and publication. The announcement was signed 29 July B.E. 2564 and published 24 January B.E. 2566, and no reason for the delay is given in the instrument.
• The condition of the murals now. The department's last recorded condition for the monument is simply that it is in a poor state, which for a timber building with painted ceilings is a time-limited statement.
• Opening hours and access arrangements. No state source consulted states any.

Wat Hongsaram: common questions

Where to go from here

Before you go, read the guide to Buddhism and temple etiquette in Thailand — dress, footwear, where photography is not welcome and how to behave around monks. The rest of Pattani’s temples are covered here too.

Every temple here sits in a place worth reading about on its own terms. The nationwide temple guide covers the other provinces to the same documentary standard as this page, and says on each one what the record establishes and what it does not.

If you are thinking about more than a visit: work out which Thai visa route fits your situation, and see what is available to rent and buy in residences across Thailand.