Bizarrely, this place-name was appropriated wholesale by
Ian Livingstone in 1984 as a setting for his
Fighting Fantasy gamebook #6,
Deathtrap Dungeon. His Chiang Mai is the name of a region on the continent of
Allansia ruled over by the twisted
Baron Sukumvit Charavask from the town of
Fang on the river
Kok - that waterway not merely marking the end of the foothills of the
Icefinger Mountains and the start of the
Pagan Plains, but conceptually dividing "exotic" Chiang Mai from the boilerplate Euro-fantasy realm of
Old Allansia.
From the town of Fang Sukumvit mounts his annual Trial of Champions (challenging the toughest in the land to survive the puzzle- and trap-filled dungeon of the book's title) every Mayday, offering to any winner a purse of 10 000 Gold Pieces and citizenship in the otherwise quiet and prosperous province of Chiang Mai.
Both the province and the Dungeon are revisited in book #21, Trial of Champions, and the town of Fang is the point of departure for locations east (Zengis and Karn among them) in its sequel, gamebook #36: Armies of Death - both also by Ian, who seemed the only author in the Puffin stable remotely interested in this little patch of fantasy-world.
I certainly hope this is the /only/ case in which these fine hacks lifted a place-name from the real world - it would be a bit too much for me to find there really was a Firetop Mountain. 8)
anthropod says Interestingly, Fang is a city in northern Thailand, like Chiang Mai, and Sukumvit or Sukumwit is a main Bangkok street.
Oh Ian, why have you failed me so!? Ha ha, now I see in the FF FAQ it mentions that Ian wrote Deathtrap Dungeon after an "inspirational" trip to Thailand. He also lifted the river Kok - I wonder if they also have bloodbeasts there?
(Now I'm wondering if Fighting Fantasy publication ever made it back to Thailand and its readers there wondered why the book was spreading salacious lies about a death-contest held in their hometown 8)