Listening -> Speaking -> Reading - > Writing

YES I gree!

Unlike in Mandarin where you learn the words, in Thai, you have to learn the alphabet first, similar to how you learn English. However, in Thai, there are a LOT of letters than aren't used 98% of the time, so instead of learning the entire alphabet of 44 letters, you could find a passage, take out the letters in there and learn them. Similarly, you don't need to know a lot of words to understand everyday Thai. We usually have a fancy version and a simple version of word for the same meaning, a bit like in English. It's enough to understand the simple version especially when starting out eg. กิน and not รับประทาน or สเวย for the royal family.

Instead of punctuation, we use space to separate sentences, but most of us are not very good at this, so a lot of sentences out there can be difficult to read even for us.

I'm learning Mandarin and find Mandarin letters to be extremely difficult to memorize too, so I'm just focusing on speaking and listening now. Your Thai is definitely way better than my Mandarin. I'll send you a message.