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There he is again, vaporising from the crowds like mist off the jungle floor. That long, lolloping gait is unmistakable in the lengthening shadows of the Laos sunshine. A malevolent smirk scythed across his face as he lifted the pistol with deliberate menace, never once breaking stride nor eye contact.

When you’re staring down the muzzle of a madman the list of appropriate responses is finite. Laughing almost always shouldn’t be one of them.

“Check this guy out,” I guffawed, jabbing a thumb in his general direction with breathtaking derision. The most incongruous part of this scene wasn’t the gun-toting maniac pointing a handgun at four tourists. Or that this Mexican standoff should unfold in broad daylight, as tourists and worshippers shuffled obliviously along Sisavangvong Road.

Rather, it was the sheer absence of fear on our behalves.

Buoyed by the invincibility of youth and three-quarters of a longneck bottle of Beer Lao, we dared him to pull the trigger. Never for a second did we believe that this deadly game of chicken might end in bloodshed. After all, we’d just survived the notoriously dangerous speedboat ride from Pakbeng.

We were still on a high from traversing the murderous eddies of the muddy Mekong. Worth the few dollars a head to avoid another moment more on the packed-out slow boat we’d ridden from the border town of Huay Xai just 24 hours earlier.

We’d first encountered him not 15 minutes before. I was alerted to his lingering presence from the corner of my eye, amid the handicraft stalls of hand-carved Buddhas and intricately woven baskets. He seemed twitchy, agitated and out of place.

Unusually tall for a Laotian, he stood a clear head taller than everyone else. His was bald as a monk’s and dominated by a scholastic pair of circular glasses. The resemblance was uncanny. He was the spitting image of Mahatma Gandhi.

The irony was not lost on us.

As it was, our pursuer demurred from raining down steel upon us. He just marched on, melting back into the crowd. His short-lived threat couldn’t have juxtaposed more sharply with the gilded temples, orange-robed monks and wafts of freshly baked baguettes (a throwback to French colonial rule) that epitomise this former royal capital and UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This was a freak occurrence.

Ordinarily, visitors are far more likely to train their camera crosshairs on pastel sunsets over the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, from Mount Phousi’s privileged vantage point, than face down danger – real or implied.

The figurative “bullet-proof jacket of bliss” was an indigenous garment of rare properties we discovered that day. One that could only have been donned in laid-back Luang Prabang.