Is Vietnam village girl Gary Glitter’s secret child?

In the heat and dust of a summer afternoon in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, a slender girl of 11 plays happily with her cousins and friends outside the tin-roofed, single-storey home in which she lives with her grandmother.

On a tree-lined pathway in front of the building is the girl’s most treasured possession: a HK$400 bicycle she was presented with under a government programme to help bright students from poor homes. Truc Ly finished third out of 60 students in her village school this year and will use the bike to travel the 6.5km round trip to the regional middle school when she begins this autumn.

Teachers say Truc Ly has the potential to be a top student, bright enough to maybe even go on to university – a rare feat in this poverty-racked corner of An Giang, one of the Southeast Asian country’s most backward provinces.

Such praise, however, means little to the girl herself. She knows she will be fortunate to still be at school by the time the Lunar New Year holiday comes around, at the end of January. Her parents – who work year-round on a forestry plantation on the Cambodian border – are already struggling to find the HK$40 a month it costs for Truc Ly to attend school, along with the HK$100 a term for her English lessons. And as her grandmother’s health deteriorates, Truc Ly – who cooks, washes and cares for her elderly relative and catches fish from the river for some of their meals – knows her school days are likely to be numbered.

“I like school and maths is my favourite subject,” she says, shyly. “I would like to go on to high school but I may have to leave and look after my grandmother full time soon. She is too sick to leave home now.