By Karen Lema

MANILA, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Heavy rain and wind lashed the northern tip of the Philippines on Monday as Typhoon Mitag swung out of the archipelago, tripping power lines and flooding farmlands but causing less destruction than expected.

Mitag, a category 1 typhoon with winds of 126 km per hour (78 mph) at its centre, lost strength as it made landfall late on Sunday and did not directly hit the central Bicol region, where nearly 300,000 people had been evacuated.

In the northern province of Cagayan, Ronald Ayuyang, 39, said Mitag, a woman's name pronounced Me-tok from Yap in the Pacific Ocean, was not as strong as previous storms.

"Last night, it was raining heavily but today we are only experiencing winds. Sometimes, we can see the sun," the father of two told Reuters.

"Our neighbours are already cleaning their homes, sweeping broken branches and twigs."

Taiwan issued a warning on Monday for large waves, torrential rain and high winds off the island's southern tip. Mitag was 390 km (242 miles) south of Taiwan at 0000 GMT.

"Waves in the oceans around Taiwan are extremely big," the bureau said in a statement. "Ocean travellers and boats working at sea should be especially careful."

Mitag was not expected to make landfall as a typhoon in Taiwan, but it might come ashore as a lower-level tropical storm in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second largest city, on Tuesday, according to British typhoon tracking Web site Tropical Storm Risk (www.tropicalstormrisk.com/).

Five people drowned in Bicol and one was electrocuted over the weekend but the region, regularly hit by typhoons, was spared lethal landslides or mass flooding after Mitag veered north.

In the central province of Albay, where the sun was shining on Monday, tens of thousands of people were allowed to leave makeshift shelters in churches, schools and townhalls as Mitag headed out to sea.

Tropical storm Hagibis, which killed 10 people in the Philippines last week, was set to return to the archipelago on Tuesday after it made a dramatic U-turn over the South China Sea, according to Tropical Storm Risk.

Disaster officials said they were monitoring the progress of Hagibis, which means "rapidity" in the Philippines' Tagalog language, but no new evacuations have been ordered.

Hagibis disrupted coffee and oil production in Vietnam after it dumped rain on several south-central provinces last week.

Storms regularly batter Vietnam and the Philippines and this year the central government in Manila ordered pre-emptive evacuations to try to avoid a repeat of last year's devastating Typhoon Durian, which killed 1,200 and left 120,000 homeless when it crashed through Bicol in December. (Additional reporting by Ralph Jennings in Taipei; writing by Carmel Crimmins; editing by David Fogarty)

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