It looked too good to be fake, even if I did start to get nervous while waiting to cross through the border.
The trip to the airport was entirely painless. I left the hotel in Shenzhen around 7:00 AM and caught a (27 yuan) taxi to the Guangdong border crossing. When I climbed out of the taxi a tout with a manbag over his shoulder approached and asked if I was going to the Hong Kong airport. He pointed me to the end of the taxi stand and produced a roll of stickers and a ticket and asked for 150 RMB. All of which, including the price, was in line with what I expected. I paid up, and about 15 minutes later (I think we were waiting on additional passengers to fill the shuttle) I was going through customs which took all of five minutes. It literally took longer for the shuttle folks to pack five passengers’ bags into the back of a Toyota van than it took to get through customs. The van took us straight through to the airport, and from the time I left the hotel to the time I reached my gate in Hong Kong International it took under two hours.
The touts slap this on before you cross the border, and someone picks you up on the other side when they see it.
It took four people about 15 minutes to get the bags packed into the van. And the passengers still ended up holding half their stuff.