speaking spanish (rather than walking it...)

I speak no Spanish. habla Ingles? mi no habla espanol.
I'm not proud of this fact. My trip is littered with verbal stumblings.
After asking(actually struggling to ask) for something I keep forgetting to say "por favor" so I make up for it with too many "gracias". I'm just concentrating on the nouns too much. Sod grammer, and politeness?? You think I'll remember that after going through the trauma of saying "thing" "thing" "thing" and hoping that the poor sod listening will make sense of three (un)related words?
"Please" just ends up blurted out afterwards confusing them even more, like I'm about to strangle their language again.