diff --git a/docs/changelog.rst b/docs/changelog.rst
index 996b5ebd..b749ca2b 100644
--- a/docs/changelog.rst
+++ b/docs/changelog.rst
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Changelog
 
 Changes in 0.7.X
 ================
-- Updated URLField - can handle unicode and custom validator (MongoEngine/mongoengine#136)
+- Updated URLField - can have a custom validator (MongoEngine/mongoengine#136)
 - Allow Django AuthenticationBackends to work with Django user (hmarr/mongoengine#573)
 - Fixed reload issue with ReferenceField where dbref=False (MongoEngine/mongoengine#138)
 
diff --git a/mongoengine/base.py b/mongoengine/base.py
index 2044d630..342b31ec 100644
--- a/mongoengine/base.py
+++ b/mongoengine/base.py
@@ -1344,7 +1344,7 @@ class BaseDocument(object):
                 return self.__unicode__()
             else:
                 return unicode(self).encode('utf-8')
-        return unicode('%s object' % self.__class__.__name__)
+        return '%s object' % self.__class__.__name__
 
     def __eq__(self, other):
         if isinstance(other, self.__class__) and hasattr(other, 'id'):
diff --git a/mongoengine/fields.py b/mongoengine/fields.py
index 3dc67490..01d3fc63 100644
--- a/mongoengine/fields.py
+++ b/mongoengine/fields.py
@@ -118,11 +118,8 @@ class URLField(StringField):
 
     def validate(self, value):
         if not self.url_regex.match(value):
-            scheme, netloc, path, query, fragment = urlparse.urlsplit(value)
-            try:
-                netloc = netloc.encode('idna') # IDN -> ACE
-            except UnicodeError: # invalid domain part
-                self.error('Invalid URL: %s' % value)
+            self.error('Invalid URL: %s' % value)
+            return
 
         if self.verify_exists:
             warnings.warn(
diff --git a/tests/test_fields.py b/tests/test_fields.py
index 528f2a16..98065501 100644
--- a/tests/test_fields.py
+++ b/tests/test_fields.py
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 from __future__ import with_statement
 import datetime
 import os
@@ -199,9 +200,6 @@ class FieldTest(unittest.TestCase):
         link.url = 'http://www.google.com:8080'
         link.validate()
 
-        link.url = u'http://президент.рф'
-        self.assertTrue(link.validate())
-
     def test_int_validation(self):
         """Ensure that invalid values cannot be assigned to int fields.
         """