Pii May or Lao New Year is considered the most important and largest traditional festival in the country. The festival coincides with the end of the dry season and the beginning of the monsoon season - seen as a day of rebirth and purification. Although already passed, (San Francisco April 11, 2009) the festival was intended to celebrate, collaborate, educate, and advocate 30 years of Lao history in the United States. "As a result of the Indochina Conflict (Vietnam War), Lao refugees have called the US home for the last thirty decades. The first wave of Lao refugees came to the US in the late 1970s. Close to one million people of Lao descent now live in the Us, and about 35,000 of them reside in the San Francisco Bay Area." Link