Soon I must return.  Doctor Hwang has called for me.  The last time I visited Angkor Wat was in 2016.  Please, bear with this old man as I drift back into the foggy ruins of time… before the iPhone… before computers… long before the internet ever came into being… when I first gazed upon the words… “The God Horus Lives.”

            I was so young, so very young.  Such a foolish boy.  While my peers were surfing the waves at Windansea Beach or skateboarding down Nautilus Street, I was sitting alone at a desk on the 4th floor of the UCSD Central Library.  Famous for its architectural design, the UCSD Central Library is built like an upside-down stone and glass pyramid.  The 4th floor was a restricted floor in that era, it was where all the Masters and Doctoral Thesis manuscripts were kept before final review and grade.  They were not for public consumption.  Only the heads of departments, the President of the University, and little old Alex Schrader, lucky me, for two weeks at least, had access to this floor.

            In that short period of time, I read so much about a great deal of topics.  I read some of the most amazing things, some of the most incredible as well as outlandish ideas.  I learned so much about history, currency, the history of currency, the dawn of microchips, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Catholic Church, the fate of the Knights Templar, even obscure things such as the curious case of Pierre Picaud – a shoemaker from Nimes, France – whose amazing life was the source material for Alexander Dumas’ legendary novel “The Count of Monte Cristo.”  For better or worse, I was left with an unusual connection to the events leading up to the Trojan War, as well as an obsession with cataclysm and lost continents.

            The only thing that caused my eyes to look away from the words “The God Horus Lives” was a flickering light.  My bubble was momentarily burst, I thought I felt the presence of an intruder as I looked up from the manuscript and meekly but sharply called out “Who’s there?!”

            Obviously, nobody was.

            Lower lip quivering, I grabbed a chocolate donut on my desk and turned back to the manuscript.  As I recall, its thesis was quite simple.  It had connected the construction of the great temple of Angkor Wat to ancient Dynastic Egypt, meaning that whoever helped to engineer the construction of the temple, had an almost priestly understanding of the religion of ancient Dynastic Egypt and its relationship to the cosmos… or to the stars and the constellations in the sky.  It even went so far to suggest that the name Angkor Wat was a reference to the Egyptian God Horus – a God with the face of a Falcon who was the son of Osiris and Isis. 

            I looked up, nodded and said “Ankh is life.  Hor is a reference to Horus.  Angkor means Horus lives.”  It had taken a solid week of reading and jumping between subject matter just to get to that point, you understand.

            Yes, the great King Suryavarman II is the builder of Angkor Wat, and yes, it was constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the God Vishnu.  None of that is in dispute.  But Dravidian Sages have had connection and trade with the peoples of Egypt and Asia since remote antiquity, so it is possible, though remote and not entirely sacrilegious, to suggest that an Egyptian engineer could have ended up in the court of King Suryavarman II, and may have put his own personal stramp into the layout or construction of the temple.

            You decide.

            But as I wolfed down the last of that chocolate donut, I was left with a sinking feeling at the age of 10, that Angkor Wat would always be shrouded in mystery.  There would be no reason for me to go there.  The dark cloud of Pol Pot still hung over that region so I never dreamed it would be possible.  It would always be one of those… “out of place artifacts”… that I would reference from time to time in University conversations.

            A lifetime later, I stood before the temple with Doc and his business associates.  Unlike the crowd of thousands, I was looking for something…

            Of course I was. 

I had three decades of knowledge at my disposal.  Many of things I read about during my two weeks at the UCSD Central Library had come to fruition:  The discovery of the underground city, Derinkuyu, in Turkey.  The discovery of Gobekli Tepe, in Anatolia Turkey, the oldest shrine on planet Earth, buried on purpose over 11,600 years ago to avoid potential destruction from a meteor impact.  An impact that would change the course of our world forever.  A few of the people I came across over the years that had done research in these fields, Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson, to name a few, have become quite famous with best selling books and hit Netflix shows uncovering many interesting pieces of information about our past.

Doctor Hwang was well aware of my obsession with the temple, so he was able to guide the money-men towards the crowd as I read the Battle of the Kurukshetra mural of the Mahabharata in the Central Building of Angkor Wat with 5 or more Buddhist Monks behind me… curious as to why an American would be here?  Why the need for such detail…?

What was I looking for…?

            That was then.  Now, none of that matters.  None of it.

            I’ve spent the past few years kind of like a silent, watchful guardian over the schools that Doctor Hwang runs.  Check writing is one thing.  So I’m going to go back to Cambodia and Angkor Wat… because that’s what needs to happen.  Because sometimes the truth… my truth… isn’t good enough, or important enough.  You kids deserve more, you deserve better.  Sometimes you deserve to have your faith and your hard work rewarded.