When I first started coming to Pattaya a few years ago, I obviously didn't know any Thai.
I would meet girls in soi 6 bars, and we'd roughly chat back and forth with Google Translate a little bit, but the lack of easy communication skills meant that things were more physical and playful/sex focused.
Now that I speak conversational Thai, when I go meet girls, even on Soi 6, they seem more interested in hanging out and talking with me. All the encounters where we're speaking Thai together are very friendly, but loses all of the raw sexually charged energy that I noticed before. They seem comfortable and happy to hang out and chat, and whenever things get sexual, it feels more like an obligation instead of being the initial reason for us meeting in the first place.
Before I learned Thai, I imagined that it would give me an easier time with women who don't speak english. But now it's more like hanging out with a friend, and of course comes with questions and suspicions that I have a Thai wife.
I'm going to try switching off the part of my brain that naturally speaks Thai with Thai people and see how that changes my time here for the next few weeks.
I'm curious if anyone else has had this kind of experience.