You are looking at Puta-O market in the North of Myanmar. Amazingly, the gate to the market opens at 5:00 am in the morning, even before you can see any daylight. When the gate opens, the shopkeepers and customers alike enter the market together. Seeing the shopkeepers busily preparing their shops is an interesting scene far onlooker. These shopkeepers have to wait at the gate of the market since 4:00 am in the morning so that they can sell their wares.
PutaO market, situated in the northern part of the country, may be very cold in the early morning, but this doesn’t turn any of the shopkeepers and customers away, instead the market is teeming with people.

If you are aiming to come here to the market, bring along a torch or candles so that you will be able to choose what you want to buy instead of searching in the dark.
Using a torch to search for the meat or fruit of your choice may seem somewhat odd and strange to visitors from other regions.All kinds of fruits and vegetables are sold at PutaO market. They are fresh and green. And the fish they sell are from the region surrounding PutaO. They come in all sizes and shapes.
PutaO market is the place for you to buy smokey fish and dried fish. After 6 am, the rays of light break through the darkness and you will witness a beautiful sunlit morning.

Many a PutaO mornings is overcast with mist. Those customers, who cannot make it in the early morning, try to get there before the market breaks-up for the day.
At PutaO market, you will find all sorts of regional herbal plants with medicinal value. Especially, the Magit tubers, Khamtaut roots, Ma-shawt and Shie padee plants are found only on the ice mountains in the region.
The shie padee … while at first existing as a living animal, later on turns into a lifeless plant when the weather becomes too severe to exist anymore. From its head, sprout will come out. And if you look very carefully at the Shie padee plant, you will see it resembles a live animal with a body and a head.

You can buy traditional costumes and handicrafts made by national races of the region as souvenirs and presents.
They don’t have a fix market day, but you will see that whenever the market is open it is crowded.
Around 7 am, PutaO market comes to a break, and you will see everyone, from sellers to buyers preparing to return to their homes. As they will be coming back here, yet another days to buy and sell.
Thus PutaO market will always be teeming with people in the early mornings of its market days.