Does learning the language of your destination improve your experience? Like beyond basic phrases.

More obscure the language the more thumbs up you'll generally get.
White guy learning Chinese? You'd be amazed how much they work with you.
White guy learning French? Good luck.

Thankful:
>Russian
>Chinese
>Japanese
>Greek
>Italian
>Portuguese (Brazil)
>Turkish (don't fuck with their women though)
>Afrikaans
>Obscure eastern european languages

Not thankful:
>English
>Spanish
>French
>Dutch
>Arabic
>Most western euro countries

Have not been to anywhere in Asia besides China and Japan or the nordics but these are my findings.

>>2791945 (OP)
no doubt it does

>>2791945 (OP)
Massively. It's the key to escaping goytier experiences in most places.

>>2791945 (OP)
I find that speaking local languages always improves my experiences, whether just by making things easier logistically, getting more positive, warmer interactions with locals, or actually opening up opportunities for experiences that would otherwise be missed.

It can have cons, of course—understanding what people are saying can expose you to things you end up wishing you hadn’t overheard. It’s not all THAT common, globally, but locals in some heavily-touristed areas where visitors don’t usually understand them can be revealed to be shit-talking or making fun of guests who are standing right in front of them. I’ve seen that happen in Thailand and Laos, although my own pretty good Thai and more basic Lao have always been received really warmly—it’s the closest I’ve ever come to one of those stupid videos where some guy is surrounded by people oohing and aahing with admiration about his ability to order soup in Cantonese or whatever (which has never been a goal of mine when trying to pick up languages; more often than not if you speak a language proficiently enough, people just acknowledge that you are a fellow human and carry on with whatever business is at hand).

And although I’ve never had the experience myself, I’ve known a few people who’ve reported realizing that they didn’t actually like locals once they could talk to them. I feel like I’ve seen weebs express this kind of disappointment here before, for example, although they may just have been shitposting.

>>2796464
Probably because weebs hold Japan on a pedestal and think they are holy saints when in reality they are just humans that are just as flawed

>>2791945 (OP)
Iits because Western countires have enough tourism and guest for decades than Eastern Europe. The languages are so easy to learn and they have seen so many low iq niggers and arabs speak their native tongue its not impressive.

>>2791946
>spanish
>not thankful
in mexico and guatemala they seem very happy when I conversed in the little spanish I know, barely any but they always ask how I learned and compliment me on my spanish and want to teach me more