If you're looking for something more phonetic possible as a stepping stone, Lao, despite having less content to consume, is much, much easier to learn where the abugidas look about the same if you squint; you could look at Lao as simplified Thai (with a 6th tone). Lao had a spelling reform recently that dropped all the duplicate letters for Pali/Sanskrit words, there's no implied vowel (and they change form less), there's no การันต์ (◌์), and the final consonants are normalized to the sound it makes. Lao and Thai are asymmetrically intelligible where Lao people understand Thai but not the other way around. That said, the Northeastern Thai dialect, อีสาน, is almost identical with small dialectal differences. Grammatically they are the same so anything you learn in one will almost certainly transfer to the other with just a different vocabulary set for common words (to do, to work, I, you, man, woman, etc.).
Good luck and สู้ๆ นะ!