AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Wat Moli Nimit (also written Wat Molinimit, and known locally by its village name, Ban Hang) is a small Thai Buddhist temple set in the rice-and-rubber farmland of Makrut, in Khok Pho District, Pattani. Far from being a grand monument, it is exactly what most Thai temples are in everyday life: a working monastery, a place of merit-making, and—for the Thai-Buddhist families of this predominantly Malay-Muslim southern province—a quiet but stubborn anchor of faith and identity.↗↗
Founded as a temple in 1922 and belonging to Thailand's mainstream Mahanikaya order, the site grew out of a gift of land from two local Thai-Buddhist brothers and was renamed Wat Moli Nimit in 1985. Today its ordination hall and open grounds function as what regional reports call a 'heart-gathering center' for the surrounding community—a living place of ceremony rather than a sightseeing stop, and all the more interesting for it.↗↗
A Buddhist anchor in deep-south Thailand
Pattani sits in Thailand's far south, where Buddhist temples like this one stand at the heart of minority communities that have kept their traditions alive for generations. Wat Moli Nimit began when two Thai-Buddhist brothers donated empty land for a monastery; the temple was established in 1922, received its formal ordination-hall boundary (the wisungkhamsima) in 1936, and carried the older village name 'Wat Raeng' before being rechristened Wat Moli Nimit in 1985. It is a wat rat—a commoner's temple of the Mahanikaya school—supported by local laypeople rather than royal or state patronage.
