I suspect the majority of foreigners tend to go to the foreign owned/clientele bars, where/when they are available.

That said, in these bars a high percentage of the customers are Chinese.

I strongly recommend the following 2:

Fargo's in central Green Lake (in the center courtyard). Great quiet atmosphere. Great coffees, drinks, pizza and waffles & icecream plus wifi.

Or "Meeting Point Coffee Bar" which is directly next to Vervo and Alei. They have great coffee and smoothies too, wifi. You'll easily recognize it by its Scandinavian style all-white interior.
They do focus less on spirits though.

PS: please post according to the request of the poster. So don't start promoting Clubs and Bars you can't even hear your own voice if the person asked for a nice place to relax and talk. That includes KTV's. Thanks for your consideration.

Easy to relax and talk at Muyu.

muyu is great for relaxing, and the staff is wonderful. i frequent a tea and beer bar at jin ma its called lazy people or something similar. its in the back of jinma if you walk down dong si jie from jin ma and make the first left its the first or second bar. they have a wall of books and mags. you can also write on stickys and put on the wall. its very cheap, and its quiet with light music.

There are obviously lots of Chinese at any bar you go to in KM, this is China afterall!

@Haaili - There are some nice bars for chatting in the green lake area but they can be very pricey so be prepared, new one opened call cui and you can actually sit in green lake on the water, very cosy.

vervo can be unpredictable, sometimes there is a great crowd and really packed, sometimes it is empties early, really depends upon the event they have on. Club section only opens on the weekends. The rest of the time it is just a normal bar and quite relaxing.

Camel bar is also another option you may not have considered, it is quite large and easy to have a chat at the bar or play pool, lots of chinese but sometimes foreigners too, they also have events on but air can get bad if really full.

I have not been to "Meeting Point Coffee Bar", will check it out, thanks Silvio.

That is the actual translation of the name. Translation software makes the mistake to call it "Brother Coffee Bar" because of the Chinese character conjunction. They don't have an official English name yet.
A number of their staff and management do speak (little to good) English.
It's directly behind Vervo.

Camel bar is good.

Went to Alei last night. Drinks were a little expensive, but there is a good selection of cocktails. The menus were written in perfect English. The small 'tapas' dishes are reasonably priced, and the one I had (cod) was not bad. Atmosphere wise, it was all Chinese and all the customers sit with their friends/partners and ignore everybody else. Live music was fine, but the music inbetween was very hit and miss and not keeping with the suroundings! Liked the old hip-hop/RnB classics though! They seemed to have way too many staff, we counted 11 standing around doing nothing, and the servers didn't seem to know how to serve a plate of food! So to sum up, western prices, Chinese service.