REPORTER’S DIARY: From ‘holy weed’ to AI jobs, Bangkok’s lessons for Nigeria

As the aircraft roared down the runway at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, the peculiarity of Asian developmental ideas was unmistakably evident in the airport’s facilities. It was the first half of October 2026, and we were in Bangkok, Thailand, for the World Bank/IMF off-site meetings, which the city last hosted about three decades ago, precisely in 1991.

The trip from the airport to my hotel facility around the Khlong Toei District offered an interesting introduction to Bangkok. In this city, the seemingly unusual often becomes part of everyday life. By the end of the week-long stay, from the peculiarities of Thailand’s wellness culture to its credit system, industrial transformation, and emerging technology ecosystem, the city offered a fascinating window into how culture, commerce, and development can intersect.

First off, “Holy Weed” — or, if you want to dwell in a little Nigerian mischief and translate it into Yoruba, ‘Igbo Mimo’, or, in Pidgin, ‘Ganja Wey Holy’ — is one of the ways the Thai people draw you into their world of homegrown wellness and spirituality. Here, wellness isn’t necessarily imported or packaged in the language of global lifestyle trends; instead, it draws heavily on centuries-old cultural practices and indigenous knowledge systems.

From Nuad Thai, the traditional Thai massage, to herbal therapies and elemental body-balancing practices, including the seemingly simple act of sitting on the bare floor, the centre deliberately preserves and commercialises indigenous traditions.

Away from the global economic development discourses and polished accents of the international investor community at the annual meetings, this deliberate conception of development as an extension of culture is perhaps my biggest takeaway from Thailand.

To be sure, from Joe Studwell’s How Asia Works to Parag Khanna’s The Future Is Asian, including Lee Kuan Yew’s From Third World to First, I have read quite a lot about the Asian developmental trajectory. But it is one thing to read about these ideas in the abstract; it is another to encounter them in everyday life.

So Thailand opened its wide, generous arms for us to explore its intricacies and breathe in its magic.

Credit, Credit, Credit

It was a clammy Friday morning, and our chauffeur was speeding through the outskirts of Bangkok. I quickly made a mental note. “There are no old, rickety taxis in Bangkok,” I said for the umpteenth time, amused by another peculiarity of the Thai development experience.

“It’s credit, credit, credit,” our chauffeur explained in his smattering of English as he navigated the multi-level flyovers on our way to the Floating Market in Ratchaburi, outside Bangkok. The message was clear: access to credit and vehicle financing helps make car ownership possible, allowing people to acquire relatively new vehicles without paying the full cost upfront.

Like Malaysia and its peers, Thailand is not, strictly speaking, an ‘Asian Tiger’. That elite distinction belongs to Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan — the four industrial powerhouses that recorded extraordinary economic growth from the 1960s through the 1990s, driven largely by manufacturing, exports and investments in human capital.

Thailand belongs instead to the cheekily named ‘Tiger Cub Economies’, alongside Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. These Southeast Asian economies have pursued variations of the export-oriented industrialisation model pioneered by the original Tigers.

Thailand experienced a remarkable economic boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s, briefly positioning itself as a potential fifth Tiger. But the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis dealt a major blow to that ambition. Today, it remains an upper-middle-income economy, grappling with relatively weak productivity growth, political instability and demographic and educational constraints.

Notwithstanding these challenges, Thailand offers important lessons in development that place people at its centre.

For one, it has successfully positioned itself as a global destination for tourism, hospitality and an expanding range of services. This offers useful lessons for Nigeria’s own diversification ambitions, particularly in leveraging tourism, cultural assets and people-to-people connections as instruments of economic growth.

More importantly, especially for our subnational governments, Thailand offers lessons in adopting accessible, intermediate agricultural technologies, farm mechanisation, and local agro-processing. Rather than leapfrogging into expensive, capital-intensive technologies that many of our states can barely afford, we can learn much from incremental, practical solutions that improve productivity and strengthen local value chains.

Thailand has also demonstrated the possibilities of economic diversification, moving beyond traditional agricultural exports into automotive assembly, electronics, machinery and value-added manufacturing. This transformation is visible in the sprawling industrial infrastructure and factories around Bangkok and beyond.

At the Floating Market in Ratchaburi, we encountered another expression of this developmental ingenuity. Here, enterprising minds have transformed a traditional waterway and its surrounding ecosystem into a tourism destination, supported by technology-enabled services. What might easily have been dismissed as an ecological burden or an informal settlement has become an economic attraction, drawing tourists and generating income for local businesses.

The comparison with our own Makoko in Lagos is almost irresistible. What if we could rethink some of our seemingly intractable urban and environmental challenges as opportunities for enterprise, tourism and livelihoods? For a country like Nigeria, where subnational governments are constantly searching for new revenue sources and employment opportunities, there is something worth thinking about here.

On one of our last nights in Bangkok, Toni Kan, the ‘Mayor of Lagos’, observed that there were no flies at a local restaurant we both visited. I told him that whatever flies existed in Thailand were probably as cultured as the people and therefore knew better than to disturb diners. He laughed.

Away from the restaurant, I walked past the Holy Weed and massage parlours and looked the other way, resisting the temptation of the masseuses who flash almost everyone a welcoming smile.

And here comes another revelation: Bangkok is consistently ranked among the world’s most visited cities. As I think about it, perhaps, just perhaps, some of the attraction lies hidden between these weed and massage stores and parlours. Imagine taking some Holy Weed and then getting a massage from some of the finest hands in the profession on planet Earth. Indabosky!

For those of us who don’t do weed — both ‘Holy’ and ‘Carnal’ — there are other attractions: the opportunity to study Thailand’s developmental journey, explore its culture and, while at it, embrace body-balancing by sitting on the floor.

That night, I asked another taxi driver whether he could afford the brand-new car he drove if he lived under a different economic system outside Thailand. He flashed me a toothy smile. I returned the smile as we drove past angelic Thai masseuses waving at us, our vehicle gliding gently into the Bangkok night.

Between World Bank and Future of Work

Shortly before and at the annual meetings in Thailand, the World Bank released a dedicated policy research paper titled “The Regulation of Platform-Based Work”, which coincided with broader flagship job-creation initiatives highlighted at the meetings in Bangkok and the subsequent Global AI and Digital Summit.

While the overarching theme of the World Bank’s recent strategy has focused heavily on the “Promise of Artificial Intelligence” and digital job creation to close a massive global employment gap, economists have published frameworks explicitly outlining the structural precarity of the “gig” economy.

I am particularly interested in the promise of AI within the context of the precarity of platform labour in Africa, Nigeria specifically, and that took me to numerous AI-focused sessions at the meetings.

At one of the tech-focused pavilions in Bangkok, I met Ghanaian YouTuber, Wode Maya, and we exchanged smiles. It was a pleasant encounter, and perhaps another reminder that Africa’s story is increasingly being told through the connections we build across borders, disciplines and professional communities.

Before the Bangkok trip, I had become fascinated by the work of Julie Yujie Chen, a professor. Her book, “Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry”, particularly interests me because of my growing research interest in how artificial intelligence and digital platforms are transforming media and economic life in Nigeria, especially among informal workers, who account for 93 per cent of the workforce.

Away from the conference rooms, I took the opportunity to engage platform innovators, builders and support professionals, picking their brains as part of my ongoing research into AI and the future of gig work in Africa. Wode Maya, it would appear, has a fair appreciation of this evolving ecosystem.

My interest in AI, automation and their place in the global economy also took me into a simulated underwater experience, where we explored the ocean and its ecosystem as though we were swimming through it.

Ah, technology!

It is fascinating how the same technology transforming industries, financial services, and labour markets can also recreate experiences that would ordinarily require us to venture into the depths of the ocean.

READ ALSO: REPORTER’S DIARY: Tasting Chef T’s jollof at Swoop’s Lagos table

Bangkok offered a little of everything: insights into the changing dynamics of the global economy, conversations around taxation and tariffs, debates about trade and development, and invaluable networking opportunities. Beyond the serious conversations, there are also cultural discoveries and experiences to savour, particularly in the days ahead.

For me, however, the real value of being here lies in connecting these seemingly disparate experiences.

The conversations about credit and industrialisation, the commercialisation of indigenous culture, the possibilities of tourism, the adoption of agricultural technology and the disruptive potential of AI are all part of a larger development conversation.

They raise an important question for Nigeria and other African economies: how do we build development models that respond to our realities, draw on our cultural and economic strengths, embrace appropriate technology and, above all, create opportunities for our people?

As global economic decisions increasingly produce ripple effects across domestic economies, including Nigeria’s, understanding these conversations has never been more important.

So, while Bangkok offers its fair share of Holy Weed, Thai massages, floating markets and other cultural curiosities, there is so much more to take away from this fascinating city. Many of those issues linger as I keep asking questions and connecting the dots between global economic decisions and their implications for Nigeria and the wider African continent.