Officials said there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties from the storm, one of the strongest this year to hit the disaster-prone archipelago on the Pacific Rim.
The military and local governments earlier moved at least 102,000 people from the coasts, Catanduanes and the nearby Bicol peninsula, an impoverished region which is home to more than five million, provincial officials said.
"Most of Bicol is without electricity," Joaquin Berces, a member of the region's civil defence office said as residents hunkered down in the dark.
"We stayed indoors for our own safety and we probably won't know the extent of the damage until tomorrow," he said by telephone from Legazpi city, the regional capital about 350km southeast of Manila.
Communication and power lines have been cut in Catanduanes, he added.
Festivities abandoned
Experts had earlier warned of large coastal waves of up to 2.5-metres high, floods and landslides.
The typhoon was forecast to sweep west toward the country's most densely populated areas, passing just south of the capital Manila on Monday afternoon.
"It would pass over land overnight and we hope that would dissipate the typhoon's strength somewhat" before reaching the Manila area, state weather forecaster Lorie de la Cruz said.
She said maximum sustained winds during land fall were 185km per hour, far lower than the 250kph winds estimated earlier by the US Joint Typhoon Warning Centre.
Nock-Ten, named after a bird found in Laos, struck on one of the biggest holidays in the mainly Christian nation, and one provincial governor offered roast pig at evacuation centres to entice people to abandon celebrations at home.
"Floods terrify me. Each time I hear about a coming typhoon I want to throw up," Criselda Buenvenuto, 68, said as she joined neighbours sheltering at a school in the town of Santo Domingo in Bicol.
The hunchbacked widow lived alone in the kitchen of her house after the rest of it was destroyed during a typhoon 10 years ago that killed more than a thousand people.
In the village of Alcala on the slopes of the active Mayon volcano, about 100 babies, toddlers, parents and elderly people were the first to be trucked off to another school as rain and strong winds shook trees.
