UB '06 - Now named:
"The Bayanzurkh District's Governor's Cup"

1st place Tokyo Canadiens 6 pts
2nd place Geckos Seoul 4 pts
3rd place Otgon od Ulaanbaatar 2 pts
44th place Chiefs Seoul 0 pts

Gervais, Doc Martin, John Kung and I  went to UB in January. Our plan was to play with Pujee in semifinals, but as we got on ice the other teams went bananas. In the end only I was able to play.

Brief note from Mongolia.

This year we wanted to relive tournament glory from 2004 when Beijing
Dragons won the four team international tournament in UB. Unfortunately
with tournament time being changed bit back and forward most of our
players couldn't go. In the end we were four left who still wanted to
play. Yanni, Doc Martin, John Kungfu and I went to Ulaan Baatar week
before Chinese New Year to join Pujee's team for the Mongolian
semifinals.

Pujee picked us up from airport at noon on Friday and our first game was
scheduled for 2pm. Of course it didn't start at time and we were also
late. When we all got on the ice the other team went bananas and
demanded that we have to leave the ice. In the end they agreed that I
can play. Not mention that they had few Russians in their team...
Unfortunately we lost the game and were looking at Bronze final the day
after, but then none of us were allowed to play. Pujee and his boys did
the job and got the Bronze anyway.

After the game we headed back to the hotel for shower and preparations
for the UB night life. We had Mongolian mutton dinner and couple of
beers (Yanni of course drinking red wine...). I think we all wanted to
visit our favorite bar/club in UB and took a taxi to famous Marco Polo
bar. We were surprised to find it very dark and after knocking the door
couple of times one guy opened the door and said to his "fluent" English
"no service" and slammed the door closed and wouldn't open again. We had
no idea why it was closed...

Anyhow we were still bit thirsty and went to couple other bars to have
some beers. It ended to be very quiet night for us and after we saw some
kind of show in one bar we went back to hotel.

Next day we got the news about Marco Polo. Apparently police had busted
the place when they got hint that there is drugs and guns in the bar.
There were many rumors about this, but it didn't make any difference,
Marco Polo stayed closed.

We still had couple of days in UB, but no games to play so we went every
day to Pujee's rink to play with his kids' team. We had also a change to
meet "Waitress number one" from Flower hotel and also couple of the
contortionist we met two years ago. They all said hi and hope that we
can bring Beijing team to UB again.

Yoko

Yoko